The Red and The Black
by DavidB226Morris
Summary: : Baltimore, November of 1996. The drug war continues to rage. The bodies continue to fall. Al Giardello's shift seems to be falling apart with each passing week. When a rookie detective transfers from QRT to 'help', everyone is cynical. They should be. The new detective has a rabbi with an agenda. Craig Worden will soon have to choose a side - the bosses or the murder police.
1. Chapter 1

**The Red and The Black**

 **A Homicide Fanfiction**

 **Written by DavidB226Morris**

 **Summary: Baltimore, November of 1996. The drug war continues to rage. The bodies continue to fall. Al Giardello's shift seems to be falling apart with each passing week. When a rookie detective transfers from QRT to 'help', everyone is cynical. They should be. The new detective has a rabbi with an agenda. Craig Worden will soon have to choose a side - the bosses or the murder police.**

 **Disclaimer: Frank Pembleton, Tim Bayliss, Al Giardello, and all the other characters are the property of Tom Fontana, David Simon, Barry Levinson, and the rest of the geniuses who labored on** _ **Homicide: Life on the Street**_ **for seven glorious seasons. Craig Worden is a character I created (mostly) out of full cloth. Everyone else, I'm just borrowing for a little while.**

 **Rating: If you watched this series regularly, you know damn well how little violence or sex was on this series. I'm mostly going to stay within that realm. The language - well, those of you who saw** _ **OZ**_ **and** _ **The Wire**_ **know just how much those cops and criminals alike could really curse, so I'm finally going to allow all the detectives on the show to use the language they probably would've if they hadn't been bound by the censors. We'll start around T, but my guess is this will fairly soon edge into 'M' territory.**

 **Timeline: This story will start around Season 5, just around the time the investigation into Kellerman for bribery is starting to unfold, Pembleton is still chained to his desk, and Juliana Cox and Terri Stivers have been introduced. We will stay fairly close to canon for some of the stories. Eventually, though, we will branch into new directions.**

 **This series will also focus on certain episodes, seen from the perspective of Worden. This will cause ripples of their own.**

 **All Right, let's begin.**

Chapter 1

Lieutenant Al Giardello normally liked to look over his squadroom. In the face of the overwhelming chaos of being in charge of a Baltimore Homicide Unit that had to investigate anywhere from a hundred to a hundred twenty of the city's two hundred fifty murders a year, in a city where more and more of the murders were becoming stone cold whodunits, looking over his command seemed to give him control, or at least the illusion of control.

Now, however, as he stared at the squadroom, he was beginning to think that illusion was becoming more obvious with each passing day. It seemed clearer and clearer that there was some kind of curse over his squad.

The problem had begun last year. After being shot while trying to serve a warrant on a pedophile named Glenn Holton, neither Stan Bolander or Beau Felton had truly been the same. In an effort to provide some kind of therapy, he had sent the two of them to a convention in New York. The two had repaid his trust by acting like children, getting drunk and mooning other hotel guests. Both men had been handed six month suspensions. But part of him had known, somewhere deep inside that neither man was coming back. Why else had he been so quick to take their names off the board and reassign their open cases? Stan had quietly retired two months ago. Felton had been more mysterious, just sending in a letter that he wasn't coming back. His squad had been short staffed ever since.

Then there had been the chaos with Megan Russert. He'd managed to get along with her while she was Captain, but she'd been doing a slipshod job ever since she'd been promoted. Somehow, he'd known the bosses would make her pay - he hadn't expected her to get busted all the way down to Detective, though, much less end up working for him. She was still good police, though, which is why her decision to disappear of to Paris had been nearly as big a blow. He'd didn't think for a moment that Megan would be foolish enough to get knocked up, but her disappearance from the shift had made things even harder for an undermanned squad.

That hadn't been nearly as big a body blow as what had happened to Frank. The images still haunted his dreams - he'd been watching Frank deliver another one of his textbook interrogations, and then he'd started seizing, collapsing right in front of Bayliss and half the squad. Giardello had never pretending that he lived the healthiest lifestyle, but he'd been certain that Frank, more than twenty years his junior, would be at this job long after he was gone. The fact that Pembleton had been struck with a stroke, and had lingered in a coma for more than two weeks before regaining consciousness seemed just another sign as to how unfair the world was.

He hadn't lied to Frank. It had taken all of the goodwill that he had earned with the department over the last twenty-five years just to keep Pembleton on administrative duty. The fact that Pembleton had come back, stumbling over words, shuffling along, barely able to string a sentence together, almost made Gee think that maybe the bosses were right and he should be in Evidence Control.

But he had spent his whole career standing up to political animals like Barnfather and racist stooges like Gaffney, so he pushed for Pembleton like he had so many times before. But he had to qualify on the range. And Frank had always been a lousy shot. That he'd come so close to passing was a major victory, but Giardello couldn't push any further than he could. Pembleton had tried to summon his powers to chew Gee out, and it had been pathetic. Enough to almost make Gee consider pushing. Almost.

And now, apparently he'd used so many chits trying to help Pembleton, he couldn't do anything to help his newest detective. There was a federal investigation into Kellerman. He was under heat for the possibility of taking a bribe from Matthew and Mitch Roland. Kellerman had denied it, but there was clearly more to the story than he was willing to give. There were other detectives from Arson who were under investigation as well, and he'd been unusually quiet about that part. Which in Gee's mind meant that he had to have known something about it, and was protecting his fellow detectives. Whatever it was, a grand jury had been paneled.

So now, he had a shift with four detectives that for some reason had already caught a hundred murders this year. Two of his detectives were chained to their desks. Only the fact that their clearance rate had been high for half the year was keeping them from drowning in red. But neither the Colonel or the Captain had been his biggest booster before his shift started to collapse. Every time they talked to him, he could hear the sound of the gallows being built. One more thing fell apart, and those remarks about how 'tired' he looked would start being a push for him to take his pension and leave before he was pushed.

"Excuse me?"

Sergeant Kay Howard looked up. A man who looked he couldn't have been more than a couple of days over thirty was staring down at her. He was just a tad over six feet tall, had a scraggly haircut and a fringe of a beard, and was wearing narrow glasses. He was wearing a button down shirt and dress slacks that looked like they'd been purchased less than a week earlier. He was carrying a small cardboard box in which seemed to mostly have books and was taped up with Orioles stickers/

"Who are you?"

"Detective Craig Worden. I just got assigned here."

This should have made sense. This was, after all, the same way that Tim Bayliss had shown up in Homicide three years ago. Kellerman had come by a similar method last year. This was what a new detective showing up on their doorstep tended to look like. Yet instead of offering a word of welcome, she said what automatically came to her head first. "What are you talking about?"

Worden blinked a couple of times. "I was just assigned to Homicide. Lieutenant Jaspers signed off this."

"Well, Detective Worden, I'm _Sergeant_ Kay Howard. Which means I have to go through an enormous amount of paperwork before anybody transfers in or out of this department. And if you really were assigned here, believe me, I'd been filing the green sheets for the past week."

Worden had the good grace to look a little embarrassed at this. "I know what you mean about paperwork. I had to fill out a shit ton of it just waiting for the transfer request to come in. I've spent nearly two weeks in limbo before I caught the call to come in today. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked that the Baltimore P.D. is even more badly run than I thought."

Kay had to admit that this was more than likely. The red tape and bureaucracy that surrounded just about everything, from requests for more overtime to getting a new copy machine could be ridiculous. Still, given the amount of headaches she had to go through in order to clean out Russert's desk little more than a month ago, she would have hoped that there would've been a little reciprocity when it came to announcing they were finally getting a new detective.

"Where did you transfer out of?" she asked.

"QRT. Spent the last two years there."

Howard raised an eyebrow. She knew how vital QRT was for a lot of the work in the department - she'd just witnessed their work on the school shooting in September. But generally, the people who worked there were the kind of cops who preferred to operate a pure adrenaline rush - not a lot of them would be willing to trade that in for a cushy desk job, even if it was among the department elite.

"And you left the fine mental work of breaking down doors and rounding up bad guys to come among us little people?" Apparently, the conversation wasn't as private as Howard had hoped. "I suppose we should consider ourselves honored."

"Munch. Could you give us a moment?"

The detective whose cynicism was high even for murder police gave no sign he heard, just went back to reading the Sun. None of the other detectives appeared to even react, mercifully.

"I'm sure that its just a clerical error." Kay wasn't sure of that at all, in fact, but she knew just as well as Gee did how much the squad was crying out for extra help. If they were about to get thrown a life preserver, she wasn't going to frown at it. "Lieutenant Giardello's in the office at the end of the hall. Go in, and I'll see about clearing this up so we can get you set up around here. In the meantime, just put yourself over there." She pointed to Russert's old desk.

"Thank you." He put his stuff down, and walked into Gee's office. Exactly two seconds after the door closed, Munch lowered his newspaper again.

"I know we're short on help, but why the hell when they send us one of those knuckle-draggers from Quick Response?" he asked.

"Damn idiot probably shot his desk up and they pushed him on us to fuck us over." Meldrick agreed.

"Why do you guys always have to be so negative?" Brodie, who'd been busy changing the lenses of his camera. "Every since I came to this unit, all you ever do is complain."

"You've been here a year, Brodie, you're only picking up on this now?" Everyone chuckled a bit at this.

"All I hear is that the squad needs more manpower. How else are we going to clean up the clearance rate?" Brodie pressed. "The bosses finally listened to you, and sent us an extra detective."

"I think that hat has finally cut off the oxygen to your brain," Munch countered. "If there's one indisputable fact I've learned as a murder police, it's that the bosses wouldn't stop to piss on us if we were on fire."

Meldrick nodded. "Only reason they'd send any extra help is if this gut royally screwed up."

"Thanks a lot!" Kellerman told him, pushing his chair away from his desk.

Everybody winced as if they had just remembered why Kellerman was in the squad. "Hey, I'm sorry, Mikey, you know me, my mouth just runs ahead of my brain some time."

"No, I think I got your message loud and clear. You know, I'm actually glad what's-his-face transferred in." Kellerman told them all belligerently. "Now that he's the new guy, someone else can make the damn coffee, file all the paperwork, and order all the fucking office supplies! "

He walked out of the squadroom.

Everyone considered this for a moment. "Kellerman did order me a cheesesteak instead of cold cuts yesterday," Munch finally said.

Lewis considered this for a couple of moments, then got up after his partner. Around the same time, Pembleton came walking back into the squadroom.

"How'd it go?" Howard asked.

"I-I-I was shooting a-at a target, not-not brain," He paused. "surgery."

No one in the squad bothered to mentioned that Frank wasn't exactly in the position to be doing either in his condition. "Well, while you were out, we got another new guy." Brodie told him

Pembleton turned his head. "Th-that's not funny."

"Why everyone think this is bad news?" Brodie asked again.

"B-because we've been a d-d-detective short going on," Again Pembleton struggled, "since Crosetti died. T-t-the bosses won't give help until h-hell freezes over."

"Well then, somebody turned on the AC in Hades because he's in Gee's office right now." Howard told Frank gently.

Frank seemed to be processing this for a few seconds. "G-good," he finally said. "He can get the d-damn doughnuts from now on."

He went back to his desk, and picked up his own copy of the Sun.

"Am I the only one who think this is good news?" Brodie asked/

"You would." Brodie turned to Munch. "You've moved in and have been kicked out of half the squad already. If this Worden guy stays around long enough, maybe you can convince him to bunk at his place."

"That's not why I said it was good." Munch just raised his bushy eyebrows. Fortunately, the discordant blare of the phone interrupted any further snark.

"Homicide, Munch." He reached for a pad, took down the vital information, and hung up. "Dead body in Fells Point. Where's Bayliss?"

"He's in court, testifying on the Radcliffe stabbing." Howard reminded him. "Just take Brodie and get down there."

Munch snapped his fingers. "Come on, my fair Zapruder. I'll get us a Cavalier."

Brodie stopped by Howard's desk. "Um, you don't happen to know if this _does_ live alone, do you?"

"You know, Al, sometimes I feel like it's not even worth the effort."

As he did every time he had to talk with Gaffney, Al mentally counted to five before he opened his mouth. There was something about the man that he'd always detested, long before he'd gotten the promotion that had made him his boss. Everything in his speech seemed to ooze contempt, racism, misogyny, and just plain disdain for everything that Al had spent his entire career working for. As a result, even when something that seemed beneficial for him, Al just knew that it would never be for free.

"I'm not saying I'm not grateful for the help," he said slowly. "I'm just saying it would've been nice to get a little notice."

"Al, you've been begging for help ever since Bolander and Felton humiliated themselves at that convention," Gaffney reminded him. "I just figured now that Kellerman's all but got one foot out the door, you'd finally be able to have some extra manpower."

There were all kinds of gibes and slurs in that statement. "Kellerman hasn't even been indicted, much less convicted," Al started.

"I'm just saying, after all the shit your shift has been through the past couple of years, you were entitled to some good news." Gaffney said just as smoothly. "I wasn't expecting a bouquet, but a thank you might at least be warranted."

A broken clock was right twice a day. And the truth of the matter was, Gaffney was right. He'd just gotten a look at Craig Worden's jacket. The kid seemed like something of a wonder boy. He'd done fine as a patrolmen for five years, including three commendations for valor. He'd been transferred the quick response in '93, where he'd excelled. On one occasion, he'd personally saved three lives in a hostage situation in Canton. Commendations from Jaspers up the yin-yang, which was even more remarkable - Jaspers threw compliments around like they were manhole covers. When he'd gotten his detective shield six months earlier, it had been with one of highest scores possible. On paper, Worden seemed like a perfect fit for Homicide.

So why did he feel his ulcer acting up again?

Maybe it was simply because he didn't like the idea of owing Roger Gaffney anything. And there was no way, after more than a year of haranguing his department, that he could see the Captain willing to hand over another detective, much less one this qualified.

"There are no strings attached to this particular gift," Gee finally said.

"Well, you could manage to close some more cases, get some of that red of the board, but since that's your job on a normal day, I wouldn't really call those strings."

Insulting but pertinent. A rare combination for Gaffney. "And hopefully Detective Worden can help me do just that."

"I wouldn't have sent him to you otherwise."

Howard was not having a particularly good day, even by the admittedly low standards of a sergeant in an overworked homicide unit.

First, there had been the arrival of a new detective that neither she nor Gee had apparently known was about to be transferred here. His paperwork had finally come through, albeit in Baltimore PD fashion a full week late, but it was there.

Then there was the problem that Munch had gone out on an investigation of suspicious death that the new M.E. had no clear idea was actually a murder. Munch, who rarely seemed to get involved these kinds of things, was just as sure that Philip Engle was lying about something, and he had taken the husband into the box to see if there was anything that they could sweat out of them.

Then, for reasons that not even she could comprehend, she had asked Brodie if he wanted to crash at her place for a while. She knew that she was asking for some kind of trouble with this, but the fact was she had more sympathy for the man than just about anybody else in the unit.

And now, just to make everything perfect, the news about the FBI investigation had made the front page of the Sun. Kellerman had apparently gone into another upheaval, had done something insanely stupid involving Mitch Roland, and now wasn't even on administrative duty anymore. This shift really seemed to be cursed.

Worden, in the meantime, had been looking around the squad, trying to get accommodated. The one benefit to the squad being so short-staffed was that there were a lot of options for him to set up. Pointedly, though, Kay hadn't let him set up at Felton's seat. She knew that Beau wasn't going to come back - she hadn't seen him since he resigned six months earlier - but there was still some part of her that just wasn't ready to see another face across from hers.

"Where are you with Philip Engle?" she said to Munch as he came out of the interrogation room.

"Three hours and the guys sticking to his story. He came home and found her dead." Munch told her.

"Well, maybe the guy's telling the truth." Bayliss told him.

"You've been here three years, and you still don't get it?" Munch said pointedly. "Everybody fucking lies. This guy may be a business man, and not a skell from Hagerstown, but he's still lying."

"Maybe he is, but not about killing his wife," Meldrick said. "You ever think about that?"

Munch didn't answer that. Instead, he walked straight over to his desk, and stared at the one across from it. "I'm sorry, who are you?"

"Craig Worden. I just transferred here, remember?"

"I know you just transferred. So what makes you think you're worthy of a desk, much less the Big Man's?'

Kay had really hoped that Munch was finally over Bolander's retirement. Then again, this could just be Munch being Munch.

"I'm a member of this unit. I'm entitle to have a desk."

"When I first joined Homicide, they made sit in the men's room for three months before Stan allowed me to sit near him. When Bayliss transferred here, he didn't get a desk and he was thrown a red ball the first week. Have our standards on new guys dropped so badly that we're forced to treat them as equal?"

Okay, so it was the latter. "You do have a point, Munch." Kay looked at Worden. "I think you need get everybody coffee."

"Yeah, I could use a glucose boast." Lewis told him.

"Me too."

Worden blinked a couple of times. Lewis and Bayliss were in the middle of drinking coffee right now. It was clear that he understood this was some kind of ritual. He reached for his pad. "How do you take it?"

Munch blinked. "Earl Grey, two Splendas, splash of non- fat."

Bayliss asked for decaf with non-fat milk and sugar. Lewis asked for black coffee with lemon. Howard was nice enough to ask for nothing.

"Oh by the way, don't forget to ask Frank for his order."

This was going a bit too far, but before Howard could stop him, Worden walked up to him. "So you're the all-mighty Pembleton. It's a honor."

Pembleton turned slowly. "A-and you are?"

Kay couldn't tell whether this was a legitimate memory issue or whether Frank was fucking with the new guy. Worden clearly didn't know how he was supposed to react, because he introduced himself, and asked him how he took his coffee.

"T-this is a joke right?" Pembleton turned around. "A-another way to f-f- humiliate me?"

Now Worden was stumbling over words, not sure what to say. Pembleton, naturally, took this as another insult. "K-kiss my ass," and walked off again.

Worden clearly knew he'd been set up. "You didn't have to do that," he said slowly. "You think I didn't know that Pembleton had a stroke last May?"

"Oh, so now you're an expert on medicine. You should get a residence at Hopkins. They're looking for work, too." Bayliss told him. "For all you know, Frank could be having as much coffee as he wants."

"Besides, if you know Pembleton as well as you say, you also know that was him in a good mood." Munch pointed out. "Now, he might now want coffee but the rest of us still do."

Rigidly, Worden walked over to the coffee room. "Where do you think you're going?" Munch demanded.

Now Worden was confused. "You want coffee or not?"

"That's the squad's coffee. It's swill, masquerading in caffeine form. We want the Daily Grind, nectar from the gods, you know, _actual_ coffee."

Worden was doing a yeoman's job of keeping a poker face, but Kay could pretty much tell that his fuse was burning pretty low. "Does anybody want any change to their order?" he said patiently.

Munch paused deliberately, before finally saying: "Nope, I'm good."

After everybody else acknowledged as much, Worden ran off. "How much are you going to fuck with the guy?" Meldrick asked.

"Well, considering that you made me go running after the key to the fishbowl the first month I was here, I'd hope at least that long." Bayliss told him, clearly looking forward to it.

"At least until he sees his first decomp and can order the meat lover's at Jimmy's for breakfast." Munch said with authority

"The guys from QRT, not the Mayor's protection detail," Howard reminded them pointedly. "You have to figure he's seen a body or two."

Everybody considered this. "Fifty bucks says he washes out after three months." Lewis put forth.

Howard rolled her eyes. Ever since she had come to Homicide, the unit would always take odds as to how long the new stiff would last. She had a feeling, even with her 100% clearance rate, that there will still some guys betting on her. "Has anyone ever told you mopes how juvenile you are?"

She looked at Frank, hoping that he would inject some of his former gravitas into this discussion.

"T-two months." He looked at Howard. "I-I lost my shirt on Kellerman. I w-want to make it back." 

"I've only been there two days, Captain. Did you really think I would just walk into a Roman orgy?"

"Given the way the Lieutenant runs Homicide, I wouldn't put it past him."

Craig had only known Gaffney since they had worked a couple of missing persons cases together. While they had gotten along, the man's meteoric rise up the Baltimore chain of command - Detective to Captain in less than six months - had come as much of a shock to him as it had everyone within the Baltimore P.D. Clearly, there was something going on behind the scenes, but Craig had never asked.

When Craig had gotten his detective shield six months earlier, he had passed on a trip to narcotics and vice and signed up for Homicide in the Eastern, knowing that there had been a shortage of manpower, and there might be a chance for advancement. But despite all that, no one wanted to transfer any new blood there. When six weeks earlier, Gaffney had offered to juice the process for him, he had been so frustrated that he had been kept in bureaucratic limbo that he had agreed to it.

He was beginning, however, to realize what the consequences might be.

"Look, I know the shift's been a mess for awhile, but do you really think these guys are going to just bare their souls to me on day one?"

Gaffney didn't like arguments, even when they were logical. "Yesterday, Mike Kellerman busted into Mitch Roland's office and tried to beat him to a pulp _while a federal attorney was on the phone._ Pembleton's basically office furniture, and Giardello basically just lets it happen. This is not the kind of leadership this department needs."

"If you wanted someone to get dirt on Giardello's detectives, why didn't you just go to IAD?" Craig pointed out.

"IAD loves dirty cops. They don't give a shit about incompetence. Believe me, they've got a file on everybody in arson, now. Anything else, they say I'm wasting their time."

Craig had heard Gaffney say shitty things about Homicide ever since he got kicked out. He'd say his promotion was giving him a chance to settle old scores, but that would've been on the other shift, so that made no sense.

"Captain, I appreciate what you did for me. And certainly, if I find anything that looks suspicious, I'll report it." he said carefully. "But I want to work murders."

"And you will, Craig. Just remember. There are all sorts of ways to be an effective cop. Keep that in mind."

The last statement from Gaffney bothered Craig for days after he hung up, and it didn't take a wordsmith to figure out why.

Gaffney had used the word 'effective' instead of 'good'.


	2. Chapter 2

**Note: This story contains spoilers for the Episode: 'The Heart of Saturday Night'**

 **Chapter 2**

It had been a very slow week for Worden, and for that matter, all of Giardello's shift. There hadn't been a single murder since he had joined, and the only dead bodies that he had seen had been two ODs.

Giardello had recovered enough from his shock to tell Worden that the general rule with any new detective was to work secondary the first couple of calls he got. Craig remembered his days from foot patrol that things rarely went that neatly - Tim Bayliss had been working Homicide for two days before he had caught the murder of Adena Watson. Considering how FUBAR that investigation had been practically from the beginning, it was remarkable that the man had managed to survive that first case, much less go on to become one of the best detectives in the unit - at least if the board was any indication.

None of the other detectives had exactly gone out of their way to be friendly to him since he had join the unit, but they hadn't been acting like he stunk either. He would've objected to being sent out on errands or administrative duty more than anybody else in the unit, particularly considering that Kellerman and Pembleton were essentially office bound, but it wasn't exactly like the unit was flowing over with anything productive to do.

That all changed that Saturday night. A lot of things did, actually.

"We have three dead bodies," Giardello announced at the top of the shift. "We have a carjacking in Druitt Hill, a dead body in East Baltimore, and a bar brawl victim at the Waterfront."

"That's the kind of publicity we don't need," Munch told them bitterly.

Worden couldn't blame them. For the last two years, the Waterfront had been sort of watering hole for every cop in Baltimore. This probably hadn't been the intention of Bayliss, Lewis and Munch, and no doubt it probably hadn't helped them get the clientele they had probably hoped for when they bought it, but it had managed to have a pretty solid rep for the last year. But there had been more than a few brawls ever since the place had opened, and now a murder had taken place there? No one would probably want to drink there ever again.

"Lewis, you and Munch take the carjacking," Giardello told him. "Bayliss, take Worden, see what you can find out in East Baltimore. Pembleton, you and Kellerman man the phones, help Howard maintain command here."

"Um, Lieutenant, who's going to be handling the murder at the Waterfront?" Howard asked.

"I will."

There was a moment of hesitation that even Worden seemed to understand. What the fuck was the shift commander doing going out on a case, especially one that didn't even come close to fitting the standards of a red ball. Worden knew that he should probably be paying more attending to the actual murder - the fact that a man had been killed at the Waterfront was probably the kind of thing Gaffney would've wanted details on - but he was about to go out on his first official homicide and he kind of figured that was a priority.

Besides, Bayliss was going to be there.

"I'll get us a Cavalier," he told him.

"All right," Bayliss was still looking at Pembleton, who, as he had managed to do for most of the time Worden had been here, maintained a completely blank expression. Was he upset that Worden was going out with his partner or that he was able to go out on the street at all? He didn't know how Pembleton, but he figured it had to be the latter.

"Does he do that a lot?"

"Does who do what?" Bayliss asked. "Try to frame your questions better.

"Does the Lieutenant investigate murders?" Worden asked.

"Not really," Bayliss told him. "And if we're so shorthanded that he's going out on this case, this shift is in more trouble then I thought."

He wasn't sure whether this was a dig or not. Bayliss hadn't expressed the same resentment towards him that Munch and Lewis had, but he hadn't exactly gone out of his way to welcome Craig with open arms either.

"This isn't the kind of job where we keep our opinions to ourselves," Bayliss said suddenly. "If you've got something to say, then say it."

"Honestly, I'm not sure what to think," Worden admitted. "You know the reputation that Homicide has in the department."

"That we're a bunch of troglodytes who need the patrolmen to find everything for us." Bayliss shook his head.

Worden didn't know how seriously to take Bayliss at this. "Well, that's what we think of the day shift, and I know for goddamn sure that they hate us just as much.'

"Come on. You guys are legends in the department. Everybody in the department wants to work here."

Bayliss gave a small smile. "I was like you once. I thought that the people in Homicide walked on fucking water. That there was no higher calling for anyone who wanted to be a cop. Now, half the time I stare at a dead body, I wonder if I made the right call."

Considering that Tim Bayliss was one of the most respected detectives in the department with one of the best closure rates, it was kind of appalling to hear this from him, even if that was part of the reason Worden was supposedly here. "What changed your mind?"

Bayliss didn't speak for a long minute. Worden was sure the next words out of his mouth were going to be _Adena Watson._ Instead, he just stared straight ahead, and told Worden: "This is it."

Mclellan Street. Worden knew that even though Bayliss was, by far, the most open of all the detectives working Homicide, he would be lucky if he got an answer by the end of the shift. Best to just focus on doing his damn job.

It was a dark alley in East Baltimore, which meant that it was pretty sure to be a crackhead's den. This one was not any more remarkable than a dozen others that Craig had frequented on foot patrol, but he had rarely encountered a murder victim in one.

"Tim. We've got to stop meeting like this."

Bayliss' face lit up a little for the first time since they had gotten into their Chevy. A dark-haired woman with brown eyes and a very attractive dimple wearing a black leather coat was waiting for them with a smile on her face.

"Dr. Cox, this is Detective Craig Worden. I don't believe the two of you have had the pleasure yet."

Juliana Cox. The new Chief Medical Examiner for the City of Baltimore. Worden knew enough that Chief M.E.'s usually came out to see fresh corpses slightly more often then shift commanders when to investigate them. Cox, however, was already proving herself to be something of an iconoclast in that department.

'Does Scheiner have something on you?' Worden found himself asking.

"Excuse me?" Cox asked.

"Knew the guy a bit when I was on foot patrol," he admitted. "Always seem to draw these late night calls. Said if he ever found a way to get out from under them, he'd jump at the chance. Looks like he finally found one."

Cox gave an amused smile. "He does hate going out in the wee hours, but this was all me. I'm more hands on."

"So what brings us all here?" Bayliss asked.

"Teenage girl, no ID, no wallet." Cox walked them to the body. "Strangled, beaten and tied up."

"Any sign of sexual assault?" Worden asked.

"I'll have to get your down to the morgue, but it looks that way. Whoever did this got up close and personal. Oh, and she definitely wasn't killed here. Someone definitely dumped her."

By now, Worden had gotten a good look at his first 'real' murder victim. She was pretty, but attractive in a way that looked like she was seriously damaged. "What's your guess on time of death?"

"Not that long. Six, eight hours ago at most."

Bayliss, in the meantime, had turned to the patrolman who had been on scene - Westby, it looked like. "Who called it in?" he asked.

Westby indicated two African-Americans not much older than their Jane Doe, Tom Spencer and Edgar Spritz. Worden had enough time on the Baltimore PD to know that they were on something. They tried to come up with a half-assed story of what they were doing there, but the fact that Edgar seemed more curious if there was a reward for the discovery of the victim pretty much gave the game away, even before Westby showed them the crack pipe that they had found on them.

Considering the location, there didn't seem to be any other witness besides Tom and Edgar. Bayliss told Westby to take them back to HQ after they finished the canvas. The veteran detective paid little attention to Worden for the next half hour, after it became clear there were none to be found.

As they walked back to the Chevy after exchanging notes, Bayliss spoke to him directly for the first time since. "So what do you think about Tom and Edgar?"

Worden gave it some thought. "I don't think that they killed her."

"And why's that?"

There were a lot of obvious reasons - no trace evidence had been found on either, they didn't seem the type who would be capable of doing this elaborate a murder, and then just wait around for it - but he chose the most obvious response: "They're too scared."

Bayliss remained stone-faced. "They could've killed her, and are scared of being caught." he pointed out. "Or maybe they're just scared of police. The only reason they came to this alley was to violate at least three or four various statutes of the Baltimore Penal code."

Worden considered this for a couple of seconds, then shook his head. "Addicts don't mind doing a night or two in lockup. With some of them its a point of pride. And fuck, killing a girl is worth bragging points in their world. They're afraid. And not of us."

Bayliss considered this. "They're definitely holding out," hem said. "So we're going to have to start squeezing them. After we find out who Jane Doe is."

By the time they got back to the squadroom, it was well past ten. Somehow he and Bayliss had made the most progress with their case, which pretty much said everything about how the night was going.

Natalie Silvio had been the victim of the carjacking. Bullet to the head, one to the heart. That was as far as Lewis and Munch had managed to get so far. They had put the car out on teletype, and they were checking the chop shops to see if anything turned up. More importantly, there had been a baby girl in the car. There was no sign of her.

As for Jack Widmer, the man who had died at the Waterfront (and there was a title for a Hank Williams song0, they had a roomful of suspects and witness, all of whom, quite naturally, had been too plastered to remember what they had been drinking before the first punch was thrown. This was the kind of scenario that called for half a shift, not the Lieutenant. Lewis and Munch certainly wanted to do so, but the sergeant was emphatic they work on their own case.

Bayliss, in the meantime, put Tom and Edgar in the fishbowl, and decided to try and shake their stories, such as they were. Craig's job was to start going through the missing persons reports of the last twenty four hours, and see if they could find a name to go with their Jane Doe. Because this was Baltimore, things didn't go well.

"Come on, come on." Craig was incredibly tempted to slap the machine on the side, but he knew given their equipment, it might very well break, and in a police department that was still using typewriters for its field reports, he'd get fit with the bill for the new one.

Kellerman looked at him. "I know. It's a piece of shit."

"I think my nephew uses a faster computer to play _The Oregon Trail."_ Worden said wryly.

"What's that, some kind of educational game?"

"You could call it that. You take an 1840s family across the country in a covered wagon, you risk starving the death, dysentery, cholera, malaria, and if you make it all the way there, you ford the Columbia, and you probably drown." Worden told him. "You know, just the kind of thing your average eight year-old needs to learn about."

"Yeah. Doesn't really seem like it fits with the Baltimore market." Kellerman told him.

"I don't know. Occasionally, you get to go out hunt animals for food." Worden focused on typing again. "There's some use there."

"Nope." Kellerman argued. "Not unless you go hunting with a Glock."

Worden wanted to answer that, then he saw something. "To be continued," he mumbled, as he printed out a relevant report.

Bayliss was in the middle of shaking down Edgar when he rapped on the glass.

"Making any progress?" Worden asked.

"They clearly know something, but they're either playing brain dead or they really are." Bayliss looked at him. "You get an ID?"

"Maybe. Tom and Martha Rath, reported their sixteen-year old daughter Leila missing earlier tonight. Photo seems to be a match."

Bayliss looked at him. "And that's our first break." He turned to Pembleton. "Frank, can you keep an eye on Heckle and Jeckel till Worden an I make the notification?"

"S-sure thing," Pembleton agreed.

"I can work on them a little." Worden offered.

Bayliss shook his head. "You need to learn this part of the job eventually. Besides, they might be more forthcoming than these idiots."

"Is it asking too much to hope we're disturbing them for nothing?" Worden asked.

Bayliss handed him the report with the picture. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

Bayliss' instincts were proving to be as good as everyone said they were. The trip to the Raths was not one he hoped to repeat. When they got to the door, Martha, the mother couldn't seem to process the fact that they were Homicide cops. Tom Rath could, and he seemed to be more pissed that his wife didn't get the message that something had happened to their daughter then the fact that their daughter was very likely lying on a slab in the Baltimore County morgue.

The next ninety minutes were an ordeal of a different sort. According to procedure, they had to take next of kin down to the morgue to identify the body. The ride was ten excruciating minutes, mainly because Bayliss wanted to hear what they had to say before he told them anything. Martha kept saying if they were sure that this was Lila, that this had to be some kind of mistake, that their daughter would never do something to end up dying like this. Tom, on the other hand, kept lecturing his wife, telling her that the cops didn't make these kind of calls unless they were absolutely sure about these thing, and most gallingly, of course Lila could've done something that would have ended up with her dead.

The bickering continued right up until they had walked into the medical station. Bayliss asked both of them if their daughter had any identifying marks.

"She had a tattoo of a rose on her left ankle," Tom said.

"It-its like a bracelet," Martha still seemed to be trying to defend her daughter. "You know, that thing teenager's get.

"It's a tattoo!" Tom finally seemed to have run out of patience. "Bikers get tattoos! Sailors get tattoos! Whores get tattoos." His voice actually broke a little at this last as he seemed to realize what he was saying.

Dr. Cox pulled back the blanket on her left ankle. There was the rose. Martha broke completely and fell into her husband's arms, sobbing. Tom remained stoic, though Worden couldn't tell if it was for his wife, or whether he simply couldn't deal with the fact that his daughter was gone.

Bayliss then told him that he thought that they should interview the parents separately and see if they could get a clearer picture of what Lila Rath's life was like without them talking in stereo.

"You don't really think they'd lie to us about her?" Worden put forth. "Considering what each of them seem to think..."

"Normally, its a good idea to interview the victim's relatives separately," Bayliss pointed out. "You don't want them to get a chance to coordinate whatever stories they might tell."

Worden had a feeling that this was a rule the all-mighty Pembleton had established early in Bayliss and his relationship. He also figured Bayliss didn't much care working with anybody who wasn't him. "I'll take the father," he volunteered.

"Now Lila was sixteen," he began.

"She would've been sixteen today," Tom Rath managed to maintain a level of neutrality in his tone that would've been fitting for a cop, but was rather appalling for a man who'd just lost his daughter.

"How long had she been gone before you called the police?"

"Two days."

Worden blinked. "She's missing two days, and you don't think to call the police before then."

"This was par for the goddamn course. She'll come in four, five in the morning, miss dinner, miss school, and then she'll get on fucking high horse when we ask her where she was." Tom coughed. "Martha would buy her bullshit excuses, and she'd always tell me to let it go, she's a teenager."

"Do you know any of Martha's friends? Maybe someone who could give us a hint as to what happened to her."

"I know what happened to her. She spent her whole goddamn life looking for trouble, and now she finally found it!"

Given the nature of Lila Rath's death, Craig couldn't help but agree with him on that. "Can you think of anybody she might've known who could've been capable of doing this?"

"They're all fucking capable," Tom muttered. "Look, I can give you the names of some of the people who were in her grade as high school, but most of them, they only knew her well enough for her to borrow math notes from them."

After a bit of cajoling, Craig managed to get the names and phone numbers of some of the people that Lila had hung out with. Tom Rath, however, didn't think he'd get anywhere with them, considering his wife had asked some of her classmates and none of them had seen her since school. He questioned him for another few minutes before he figured he squeezed him dry.

"I knew this would happen to her," Tom said as Worden got up. "Oh, maybe she'd have gotten in a car with a drunk driver or OD on heroine, but we were always going to find her the same way. That's a horrible thing for a father to say about his daughter, but it's true."

After they sent the Raths back home, it was pretty clear that questioning the deceased's parents had gotten the two of them collectively nowhere. Bayliss thought that it was more important than ever that they find out what those two druggies knew. Worden decided not to push the fact that one of them could have been interrogating Tom and Edgar while the other had been talking to the parents, but he could see the logic in letting the witnesses stew a little.

He was still a little insulted that Bayliss' first move when he got back to the squad was to go to Pembleton. While he was telling them how Dad thought she had brought it on herself, and Mom wouldn't have been surprised if she just got lost going back from the prom, Craig was the first to notice that the fishbowl was empty.

"Where are they?" Worden demanded.

"W-who?" Craig wondered whether Pembleton was being coy or whether he genuinely was having some kind of after effect from his stroke.

"I l-let them go home." Pembleton told them. Before they could start to fully chew them out, he told them that they had seen someone hanging out in the alley, a guy named Gary Swern. "T-they're afraid of him. With good reason."

Indeed, Swern was twenty-five. His juvenile record was sealed, but he'd done a three year stint in Jessup for aggravated assault. He'd just gotten out of Jessup a month ago.

Pembleton had very thorough in the last two hours. In addition to questioning the witnesses, and getting a probable suspect out of them, he had also managed to track down his Aunt Eileen's, who had raised him since he was a child.

The man had been chained to his desk all night, and he'd managed to get more done then the two detectives actually investigating this murder. If it had been anyone else, Craig would've have been insulted.

Bayliss took the humble. "Thanks, Frank."

"Y-y-you're wel-welcome," Frank told him, as he and Craig left to try and track down Swern.

Roger Gaffney was not going to be happy that Pembleton wasn't nearly as slow as he had hoped he was.

"Look who we found." Bayliss had been considerate enough to let Craig walk the perp into the squadroom. Then again, Craig was a bit bigger than him. If Swern decided to fight - and given his rep, that was a reasonable assumption to make - maybe Bayliss wanted to make sure that Craig took the ass-whupping and not him.

"Mr. Gary Swern. Now ever since Mr. Swern was released from the good people at Jessup, he has been staying in his aunt's basement, where all the wonderful memories of his childhood have been. " Bayliss told him.

"And among those, we happened to find a sled." Worden told Kellerman and Pembleton who were paying the closest attention. "One of those nice old fashioned sleds. Guess what was missing from it."

"I'm all ears." Kellerman asked.

"A rope." Bayliss told them. "Just like the one our crack crime lad is analyzing now for Gary's DNA and blood. So, Detective Worden, if you would be so kind as to bring Gary into our humble interrogation room, I believe he has some questions that he needs to answer."

Bayliss walked up to the Box, held the door opened like a polite maitre'd, and let him walk Swern into the room, where he un-cuffed him, cuffed him to the table, while he got out the Miranda waiver. Unsure of what kind of technique his fellow detective would use, Craig decided to let him ask the first question.

"So. Why don't you tell us about why we're here?" Bayliss began.

Swern decided not to take the hints he'd been getting all the way there. "I don't know this girl."

Bayliss laughed. "Who said anything about a girl?"

"You said there was a girl." Swern was acting like he was an idiot.

"No, I said her name was Lila. She could be someone's mother, she could be someone's grandmother." He pointed at her. " _You_ said she was a girl."

"Whatever, man."

"Fine. You don't want to take about Lila. Let's not talk about her." Bayliss paused. "Let's talk about Charlene Mills."

"Hey, hey. You can't get me for that. I did my time for her."

Bayliss said nothing, instead he looked at Craig. "That's right. You did. According to this," he looked at the file he had in front of him, "you wrapped a stocking around her neck until she passed out."

"I didn't kill her." Man, this guy deserved to go to the gas chamber.

"Not for lack of trying." Worden reminded him. "Charlene was in a coma for three days. She then spent the next six weeks in the hospital. Must have bugged the hell out of you that she was in any condition to testify at your trial."

"Lila Rath was sixteen. How old was Charlene? Fifteen? You sure like them young." Craig thought that he could see a little additional anger in Bayliss at this idea. "But then, maybe we're getting this wrong. Maybe Gary here got a raw deal."

"Definitely happens." Craig said slowly. "Maybe Charlene wanted to screw, and she liked it rough."

"Yeah, I'll bet that's what happened here." Bayliss told him. "She was a tease, she got under your skin, and then when all the smoke had cleared, Charlene decided to pin it all on you."

Gary actually considered this for a few moments. "Yeah, she wanted it. She wanted it bad."

"Same way Lila did."

"I'm telling you I don't know the girl."

This went on for another fifteen minutes. It might have worked better on someone who hadn't been around the block as frequently as Swern probably had been. But he'd been through the system enough to know better. For that matter, Worden was a little shocked that the smug prick hadn't asked for a lawyer already.

"All right, fine." Bayliss finally said. "You don't want to tell us anything fine. We don't need you to. We've got everything we need to put you back in Jessup for the rest of your life. I've got not one, but two witnesses who can put you in the alley where Lila Rath was found. We've got the rope from your sled found around the body of Lila Rath. We've got your previous victim who will jump at the chance to put you back in lockup. You don't want to try and get in front of this, fine. I'm just gonna call Danvers, and tell him that he's got yet another case that he can put in the win column. Come on, Craig. I'm gonna give you the privilege of calling the States Attorney yourself."

Bayliss walked towards the door. Worden got up as well. He had just put his hand on the knob when Swern broke.

"She wanted it."

Worden didn't turn around. Bayliss did. "Whoa, whoa. Before we go any further, I'm going to need you to read that piece of paper right there."

Swern picked up the paper, and looked at what was arguably the most familiar series of statements to anybody who'd grown up watching cop movies. No doubt this chump had seen more than his share going through the system. Craig was frankly a little shocked that a man who had gone through the system so many times was about to fall for it again.

After he finished signing and initialing the document, Bayliss sat down in the chair across from him. "She wanted it, didn't she?"

The stupid asshole actually had the balls to smile at them. "They always do."

The sun was rising when Bayliss started typing up the final report on Swern. Worden had offered but Bayliss had said that it was the primary's responsibility to make sure all the paperwork was typed up.

The rest of the shift had had something of a mixed day. The Silvio carjacking was probably going to be in red for a very long time, though they had managed to find the baby girl that had been in the back seat. And despite his doubts on their shift commander's ability to have to work a murder, he had found Jack Widmer's killer - a man who had gotten in the face of another drunk making unwanted advances to a woman, and who ended up hitting him with a beer bottle.

"What about notifying the Raths?" Worden asked Howard.

"I'll take care of that," Bayliss told him, his eyes never losing focus on the report in front of him. "Thank you, by the way."

"What, for acting as your secondary?"

"No, although you didn't screw it up that badly. No, thank you for going the whole night and never bringing up what happened at the Waterfront." Bayliss turned to him. "This is going to be a pain in the ass for months with Munch and Meldrick, and I didn't need any more distractions."

Craig was a little surprised at this. "Barroom brawls are good for business."

"Really? Cause we had a major brawl last year, and it took us three months before people started coming in droves again." Bayliss actually gave a sigh. "Now, we've got a genuine corpse. And even though they've got the killer, its not gonna be great for business that we actually had a goddamn homicide in our bar."

Now was not the time for Craig to say that the exact same thought had crossed his mind last night. He figured Bayliss was going to have his own headaches, and he was going to have his own problems.

A brawl in the bar owned by half of Giardello's shift that led to an actual dead man was probably just the kind of dirt that the Captain was looking for. The fact that none of this was their fault, and that none of it had anything to do with the kind of cops they were, wasn't going to make any real difference to his patron. Hell, he would probably get off just from the fact that the Lieutenant had solved the murder instead of trusting one of his own detectives.

Right now, however, Craig just wanted to go home and hit the mattress. He had a lot on his plate right now, not the least of which was he was still dealing with working his first real murder. He'd managed to contain the level of disgust the whole sordid affair had left him with - if his first week on the job had taught him anything, it was that you never showed how much a dead body unsettled you. He had a feeling, though, despite the exhaustion that permeated his bones, that he wasn't going to sleep that well.

He was right.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Another week on the job, but things were looking better. Pembleton had passed his firearms exam, and had vowed to go back out 'first death tomorrow'. Paradoxically, there hadn't been a murder in two days. Frank had been staring at the phone so hard, as if somehow his sheer will would manage to make it ring.

Worden was beginning to be even more puzzled by the whole way Homicide was working. He'd been here two weeks, and there'd been a total of four murders, three of them on the same night. "I know I'm going to regret asking this, but is it always this slow around here?" he asked Howard.

"Depends on the time of year," Kay admitted. "We drowned in dead bodies in January and February, we got a light summer. Don't ask me why, but for some reason Baltimoreans don't kill each other as much in June or July."

That didn't make a hell of a lot of sense to Craig, as he had dealt with a lot of brawls and fights as a patrolman in the summer. "So, is it weird that the citizens of this town have gone quiet in December?"

"Maybe its the fact Christmas is just around the corner," Munch piped up. "Maybe all the corner boys and slingers want a nice G-pack in their stocking and have decided to stop killing each other until the new year."

"Lot of them are still young enough to believe in Santa Claus," Kay said sadly.

Lewis and Kellerman walked back into the squadroom from breakfast. "Let me guess. While we were out, that phone ain't jangled once." Meldrick said rhetorically.

"Considering all the red that's under your name, I'm a little surprised you'd want to get another fresh corpse," Munch pointed out.

Almost as if that was a cue, the phone began its distinct ring. Craig had been waiting for the last couple of weeks to take a call on his own. He jumped at it. "Homicide, Worden," He grabbed a pen and paper and took down all the vital information. "Be right there." He hung up. "Where the hell is Pembleton?"

"You took the call." Howard told them.

"For three days, the man has been bitching and moaning to everyone in the squadroom that he wants to go back on the street." Worden reminded them. "The last thing I want to do is piss off Frank Pembleton."

"Gee was very clear that Frank was only allowed to go out as secondary," Howard countered. "Now, I'll grant you he'll be irked that he missed his first chance out, but he knows better than you how the game is played."

"All right. It's on the record. He missed his chance." Craig looked around the squad. "Munch, you want to ride?"

One of the detective's eyebrows went all the way to his hairline. "You. Want to partner with me."

"Never mind. Lewis!"

"Whoa, whoa. I'd just like to know where the hell I'm going. Want to layer properly."

Worden looked down at his notes. "Corner of Charles and North. Car with a dead body and a lot on the blood on the windows."

"They're sure its not a suicide?" Munch asked.

"I tend to have faith in my fellow patrolman. You coming or not?"

Munch considered this for a moment. "I'll get my coat."

Worden knew he was taking his life in his hands by going to a crime scene with John Munch. Munch had never been one of the detectives that Gaffney had told him to keep an eye on, but Craig had learned more than enough about the man just from his conversation and at the Waterfront that the detective was the definite of a loose cannon. He'd been through two partners in the last three years, he was very proud of his reputation in the counterculture, and even on his best days he was known for being a sloppy cop. He had his benefits - whatever else you might say about his rambles, you couldn't deny he was entertaining - but he figured there was a reason people kept leaving him.

"I'm a little surprised you decided to ride with me," Munch was telling him.

"You don't have a partner, I don't have a partner," Craig reminded him. "Considering you've been riding solo for six months, I figured you'd be grateful someone didn't believe in your jinx."

"Jinx?" Craig didn't have to turn his attention away from the window to know the eyebrow had gone up again.

"Your first partner takes a bullet in the brain, makes an ass of himself at a convention, and retires. Your next partner lasts six months and then runs off to Paris. Now if I were the kind of person who believed in these things, I'd say the universe was telling you that your partners will do anything to get away from you."

Munch was quiet for a minute - practically a vow of silence. "I have been contemplating that over the last few weeks," he finally said.

Worden couldn't help himself. "You're not pissed at me?"

"You'd have to mention my divorces to irk me, and frankly, I'm better off without them." Now he paused again. "Aren't you afraid you mind end up signing up for the International Space Station to get away from me?"

"Let's just see how this murder goes." Now Craig paused. "And I haven't decided to make this permanent yet, so don't get your hopes up."

Charles and North was what passed for East Baltimore's shopping district. There were a lot of relatively pricey stores around here, so the crime level had been pretty high to begin with. It was, however, rare to get an actual murder.

"Officer Rogers," Worden said as he flipped his shield over his right pocket. "Where is the lucky contestant?"

"The victim is a Frederic Robinson, African-American, 24. Found shot dead in his car. "

"Who found the body?" Munch asked.

"Amelia Kurtis. She was going to get her daily coffee and the Sun, walked by the corner store, saw the man just sitting there."

By now, it was clear where they were going. A fairly non-descript brown Ford Sedan was being surveyed by the usual throng of cops and medical examiners. Surprisingly, given the area, there weren't nearly as many looky-loos as you'd expect.

"Dr. Cox," Worden told him. "What brings us out here this fine winter's morning?"

The car door was open. Robinson seemed to match his description. 'Shot dead' was putting it mildly. There was blood all over the upholstery, the dashboard and the steering wheel. The only thing that Craig could tell for sure from first glance was that he had not been taken by surprise.

"Three shots. One in the leg, one in the shoulder, one in the back. I'll have to get him on the table be sure, but I'm guessing that at least one of the bullets in still in him."

By now, Craig had the latex on. It looked like a spent shell casing had rolled under the car. He picked it up, and took out a Ziploc. "Looks like a .22" he said. "What's your best guess as to time of death?"

"Rigor's barely set in. Three, four hours max."

Worden looked around. "A guy gets shot, and no one calls the cops for four hours? Even for this town, that's cold."

"Hey, we're lucky that someone noticed at all." Munch told him. "Besides, I'm guessing that no one was particularly going to be looking for this citizen."

He pointed under the dashboard. "If I'm not mistaken, that would be a .38 special. Mr. Robinson didn't come to this neighborhood to buy a new big screen. Or if he did, he probably wasn't planning on paying for it."

"All right. This is probably going to be an exercise in futility, but we might as well start the canvas." Craig told him.

Another patrolman ran up to him. "Detectives, half a block up the street. We found a blood trail."

Worden didn't even get enough time to think that this might actually be good luck. He and Munch took out their weapons, and followed the patrolmen. The blood trail went another block, getting thicker with every few steps. It finally ended in an alley.

There was another body in it. African-American, roughly the same age and build as Robinson, and just as dead. "Tell the crime scene people to get up here."

One of the medics rolled the body to find that this deceased had even more common with the late Fred Robinson - a bullet in his thigh and one in his stomach. He was also holding a bloody crowbar. "I'm guessing we've met Mr. Robinson's brother in crime."

"You're more right than you know," Worden told him, as he reached into the victims coat pocket. "Lamar Robinson, 22."

"Looks like someone was pruning the family tree." Munch said dryly.

Dr. Cox was not thrilled to find that she now had another body to examine, nor particularly wild that Craig had, however minutely, disturbed her crime scene. She gave him enough latitude to confirm the obvious, Lamar had taken two bullets like his brother, but he'd had enough go power to keep moving until he'd ended up in the alley. She promised to retrieve bullets and send them to ballistics.

"I'm beginning to have serious doubts about the security of this neighborhood," Worden told Munch. "No one noticed Fred getting capped three times, fine. But Lamar runs all the way past this lines of stores, lies in that alley for four, five hours, and nobody says shit?"

"I will admit, even given the general attitude of see no evil, hear no evil in this town, there does seem to be a suspicious cloud of ignorance." Munch reluctantly told him. "Granted this happened when most of these stores were closed for the night, still you'd have expected someone to have at least noticed a dead body."

"Nothing from the canvas?" Craig asked.

"Apart from Miss Kurtis, who somehow didn't noticed Lamar over there, the only person who even admits to hearing something is the night manager of the 7-11 outside." Munch checked his notepad. "He says around one a.m. he heard what sounded like gunshots coming from somewhere outside He said he called 911, but since he couldn't tell anyone where the shots had come from, the operator told him they'd get to it when they had a chance."

"And no one does shit until our Good Samaritan comes out for breakfast," Craig sighed. "I knew the bureaucracy for this town was fucked up, but this borders on ridiculous."

"You just haven't been on the job long enough." Munch said cheerfully. "I have a feeling that Kay and Gee aren't going to be nearly as considerate when they learn what had happened."

When they got back to the squadroom, Worden went straight to check and see if the Robinson brothers had anybody resembling next of kin. He wasn't expecting to. He did, however, find the other part of it.

"Frederic Robinson. 1991, arrested for heroin possession. 1993, armed robbery. Served a year in Jessup. Lamar Robinson, 1992, weapons charge, 1994, assault charge, drug possession. Pled out, got probation. All this on top of their juvie records, which I'm guessing tell us they made the honor roll at Spofford." Craig told them.

"Their mother must be so proud." Lewis said.

"Their mother died when they were eleven and nine, respectively. Chasing the dragon. Guessing that's one of the better habits she passed down to her boys."

"Along with brown eyes and black hair." Munch said reluctantly. "Well, now we know what Fred and Lamar were doing in that particular neighborhood. Looking for a score to pay for the monkey on their backs."

"What about the store owners? Any idea who they might have hit?" Howard was asking.

Worden checked his watch. "Most of them should be open by now. The 7-11 guy reported hearing gunfire, and he didn't have a weapon. Neither did the guy at the corner store."

"I have a feeling the Robinsons were chasing bigger game than that." Munch remarked. "There were at least four or five stores there that were high end. Jeweler, pawnshop, clothing store. You want to make the kind of score that holds you over for a month or so, those would be the kinds of places."

"And you think our boys were smart enough to think that far ahead?" Craig asked.

"Frederic was busted for armed robbery. You gotta figure that's a crash course in what _not_ to do." Munch reminded him. "Besides, I got a preliminary report from ballistics. His .38, there were three rounds fired."

There'd been a firefight on this block, and only one person had thought the call the cops. This was getting fucking ridiculous.

"The lieutenant's getting heat from upstairs already on this one." Howard told them.

"Over two junkies getting killed over an armed robbery in East Baltimore?" Munch couldn't help but ask.

"It's part of the commercial district of Baltimore. City officials are already getting irked that something like this could happen in the business part of town."

Worden hadn't been a murder police that long, but he knew enough that this was code for 'not black'. No one, short-term or long term was going to miss two junkies, but junkies who shot up the business section? That had to be handled. "They didn't seem to do anything when the shooting started," he reminded Howard.

"It's Baltimore. It's practically background music."

The first person they ended up interviewing was the owner of a dry cleaner named Sygman Rhee. His store officially closed at nine p.m., and he was generally at home by eleven, so at least he had a legitimate reason for not having heard the cacophony of gunfire last night. Rhee, however, didn't seem particularly happy to verify his whereabouts or be interviewed in the first place.

"Did you ever see either of these two men?" Munch asked.

The photographs were among the only ones they could find that weren't among the Robinsons mug shots. Nevertheless, Rhee viewed them with even more scorn. "Yes. They come in here every week to have their suits pressed."

"Have you seen them before or not?" Worden said just as harshly.

"Of course not, detective. Any man like that who came into my store would only be here to cause trouble." Rhee shook his head. "I live in this town for ten years, I know their type from a mile away."

"And exactly what type is that, Mr. Rhee?" Munch asked.

"You should know. It's your job to stop people like them from bothering people like me. Not that you do a good job at it."

It was becoming very difficult for Craig to keep a civil tongue in his head. "We're here to protect and serve, Mr. Rhee."

"Really? Last year, Miss Caine down the block, got shot during an armed robbery. She bled out before the police even bothered to show up. They never found who did it. From then on, I make sure I'm protected." He pulled back his coat, to reveal a revolver stuck beneath his belt.

"Yes, I have gun. I also have second amendment right to bear arms."

The next man on their list was an Oscar Juarez. He owned the pawnshop on the block, and he had fervently denied that he knew anything about the murders that had taken place last night.

"You really think that it's the wisest idea to be carrying one?" Worden asked.

"Five robberies in the four years I own this store. Six people murdered. In this neighborhood, one would have to be fool not to carry one."

Munch was beginning to look pissed. Worden thought that odd - he figured, considering how libertarian the former radical had been, especially given that he was a cop, he'd have been more inclined to have sympathy for Juarez. "Did you happen to hear the shooting last night, Mr. Juarez?"

"The store closes at midnight. I didn't hear anything before than, and I was at home with my wife."

Another loving spouse to provide an alibi. Seemed like all the suspects were married these days.

"The gun and the permit, sir." Munch demanded.

Juarez scowled even more than Rhee had, but he reached beneath his desk, produced a lockbox, and removed a .22. He took another moment and removed a permit. "I will want both of them back."

"Don't worry, sir, I have a feeling we'll be coming back," Munch told him.

"I never had any use for Lyndon Johnson. Guy was an overbearing, bully, who was willing to let tens of thousands of Americans die in a war he knew fucking well we couldn't win just so he could stay being President."

Munch had been surprisingly quiet on the drive back from the canvas. This rant, even for him seemed off kilter. "Is this your opportunity for you to ask me my opinion of who killed JFK?" Worden ventured.

"I'm always welcome to hear someone else's opinion, but that's not what I was going to." Munch focused on the road. "When Bobby and Martin Luther King were shot within two months, even that Texas asshole thought that something needed to be done. He tried to get major control legislation through Congress throughout July and August. That guy was supposed to be some legislative wizard, but even with huge Democratic majorities, he couldn't get it done. 1968, blood is running in the streets, and those pussies in Congress couldn't get their heads out of their asses."

Even after less than a month in the squad, Craig was more than used to Munch's rants. He'd rarely, however, seen him this worked up. "So what you're saying is gun control will never happen?"

"I'm saying the idea is a joke. Thirty years later, Clinton manages to get some bans of assault weapons to a four year old, and they all hail him as a hero. Meanwhile, in the city where he lives, a city so violent it makes Baltimore look like Shangri-La, the Homicide department is drowning in red ink and bodies." Munch shook his head. "Gun makers are part of the military industrial complex, bigger business than alcohol and tobacco, and as long as the industry turns a profit, people like the Robinson brothers are just going to be collateral damage."

"I hate to break your vision of the world, but you saw Frederic and Lamar's rap sheets. They weren't exactly saints." Worden reminded him.

"So that makes it okay for someone on this block to shoot them, and for the rest of their fellow owners to play dumb?" Munch told him. "Cause you and I both know that's what happened here. These kinds of things happen all the time, and people like us are here to clean up the mess."

"I'm beginning to think you've been working this job too long."

"Maybe I have," Munch sighed. "It's just that this job never changes. It's like mowing the lawn. One week, you have to mow the lawn, the next week you have to do it again. And it never stops."

"You want to contemplate a career change? Fine," Worden told him. "However, I happen to be the primary on this case. And I don't want my first two murders to stay in red. So can we save the goddamn politics on and other bullshit until we finish checking the guns at ballistics?'

Munch was silent for a few moments. "You know, I think I liked you better when you were getting coffee orders."

 _No wonder this guy keeps going through partners._

The ballistics hunt was more of an ordeal than Worden had thought it would be. Five of the store owners on the block had owned guns, but only three were .22s. The only one that was even close to a match was Juarez, but when Kirsten took a closer look at the weapon, she said that the gun had been an aught-four and the bullets that had killed the Robinsons was an aught-six. It seemed like they were back to square one.

"Did you check the registrations of the store owners?" Worden asked Kirsten.

"Way ahead of you, Detective." Kirsten handed them a piece of paper. "Three other owners on the block have licenses for more than one weapon. And one of them is Oscar Juarez."

"He lied to us. Fancy that." Munch said.

"I think its time that we brought Mr. Juarez in for a good citizenship test of our own."

Worden had made it clear to Munch that he wanted to head the interrogation. Munch had been surprisingly willing, but then again, he had a reputation for being surprisingly strong as an interrogator, when he got pissed off. And Craig had already seen that it didn't take much to get the guy pissed off.

"I give you gun. What exactly is your problem?" Juarez said before he was even seated.

"Yes, you give us gun. You neglected to tell us it wasn't your only piece." Worden reminded him. "And having been to your place of business, I couldn't help but notice the smell of fresh paint."

Juarez became a little more aggressive. "I've owned the store for four years. I'm not entitled to make improvements."

"It seemed to me that paint was very fresh. Like maybe, last night." Worden asked. "There's a bunch of gunshots in your neighborhood, and you think that its time for home improvement?"

For the first time since they started talking to him, Juarez looked a little uneasy. "Maybe I should get lawyer."

"What for?" Munch spoke for the first time. "This isn't Honduras. We're not allowed to lock you up without charging you first. And we're not going to charge you unless you've done something wrong. Right now, this is just a friendly talk. You get a lawyer in here, and by definition, its going to get a lot less friendly."

"A business owner has every right to defend his property." Worden went on. "Now those homeboys last night, they didn't come to your neighborhood because they were looking to buy a new set of tennis rackets for their club. If it was their intention last night to rob you, then there were extenuating circumstances. You might even be able to walk out of here a free man. All you have to do is tell us the truth."

Juarez considered this for a couple of moments. "Last night, around ten o'clock, they come into my store."

"Those would be the Robinsons."

Juarez made a face. "They didn't introduce themselves. Both of them take out guns, tell me open the safe, take out all the money. I hold up my hands, I go for the gun. One of them fires two shots, I fire three."

"Did you hit any of them?" Munch asked.

"I don't know. But I couldn't have aimed too well. One of them fires again. I fire three more rounds. One of them hits home. They run out into the street. I go after them."

"Whoa," Worden paused. "Why'd you go after them?"

Juarez paused. "I wasn't thinking. I was on adrenaline. All I could think of us was stopping them before they come back and finish me off. Anyway, I go into street. One of them pulls his gun. I fire another shot. He goes down."

"Okay. But why didn't you call the cops afterwards?" Munch asked. "Why's your first impulse to call your local hardware store?"

"I was afraid. Latin man shoots two black men, I figured I end up spending the rest of my life in prison." He looked around. "It still looks like that might happened."

"I grant you, his story isn't exactly the most plausible, but given everything that's happened in this town before, I can understand why he would exactly be forthcoming," Munch told Giardello half an hour later.

"What do you think, Detective?" the lieutenant asked Worden.

"I think his story holds less water than the Chesapeake," Worden told him. "He went to a lot of trouble just to cover up everything instead of just going to the cops to the first place. And then, when we came to see him earlier, not only does he lie to us, he gives us the wrong gun, and leads us down the wrong path."

"All of which is Standard Operating Procedure for just about anybody who talks to a cop," Munch seemed surprisingly less bothered by this than he had been earlier. "Anyway, I don't know why you're pressing this so hard. Oscar Juarez just handed you two closed cases."

Indeed, technically none of this was their problem anymore. Once Juarez had confessed to the murder, the case was officially the problem of the states attorney.

"Danvers is reluctant to let this case plead out." Giardello told them. "Given the possible racial component, along with where the neighborhood was, he wants more information to decide what exactly he's going to charge Juarez with."

"What exactly do you want us to do?' Worden asked.

"The technicians have been working over Juarez's store. Go over the crime scene again. Maybe the I's will dot themselves."

"Life is just so unfair," Munch said a few hours later. "A beer tap needs replacing at the Waterfront, it takes three weeks just to get a contractor to visit. This place was shot up yesterday, and somehow Juarez manages to get an entire remodeling job."

Indeed, looking at the retail shop, it was stunning to see what the CSUs had uncovered in just a few hours. The place had gone from respectable business to a shooting gallery. "Somehow, Munch, I don't think the people Juarez hired are exactly the kind that would have the best reputation for your bar."

"That would require it to have a reputation to begin with," Munch said soulfully. "All right, how should we do this."

"I'm the primary, I have to walk it through. " Craig walked over to the counter. "All right, I see two bullet holes in the wall from one of the Robinsons."

Munch looked over to see them pointed out. "Three slugs over here, from Juarez."

"He gets over to the counter, he doesn't think to call the cops?"

"You ever been shot at, Detective?" The usual snark from Munch was gone, and was replaced by what seemed to be genuine hostility. "Ever take fire while you were at QRT?"

Sheepishly, Worden remembered the shooting that taken place early last year, when Munch and his former partner had been trying to serve an arrest warrant on a pedophile named Glenn Holton. "Couple of times."

"Then you know that some times adrenaline doesn't make you think straight. Besides, Jesse fucking Owens couldn't outrun a bullet."

Worden decided that maybe Munch had a point. "All right. So he walks over behind the counter. There's still a cage separating him from the Robinsons. Another life choice."

Munch considered this. "Based on what we know, I don't think the Robinsons are the type to think that logically. And it doesn't look like it gave the guy much cover."

A fair point. One of the slugs could've gone over Juarez's head. But there was still some kind of flaw in this.

Craig walked behind the counter, trying to think, and then he saw what he was looking for. "All right, let's say for the sake of argument, he decided to buzz them in. We found Frederick in his car, and Lamar in the alley. What did he decide to do? Buzz them out?"

For once, Munch did not have a ready comeback. "He never let them into the store."

"Looks like the Robinsons would have had more of a call for self-defense than Oscar did."

"So I shot first. What difference does it make?"

Oscar Juarez had not been more willing to give any information even after Worden and Munch had confronted him with the holes in his story.

"The difference is, that you fucked up, Oscar." Worden told him. "Had you just called the cop even after you'd filled the Robinson brothers full of holes, we'd have been willing to listen."

"I own a bar, and you saw that I carry a piece," Munch countered. "Couple of homeys came into my joint guns blazing, I might think the same way you did. Hell, I'm a cop. I've got the presumption of that along with owning a business."

"You shot them up. Fine. But then you go to all these lengths to cover your crime. You have a rush paintjob done to your place. You lie to us when we come in asking you about the shooting. "

"Then you give us the wrong gun. You know how much extra paperwork we had to fill out just to prove it was the wrong fucking weapon?" Munch was actually starting to sound angrier about this then the actual murders.

"We come back to your place, you give us another song and dance." Worden told him. "You see why we might be inclined to think you're bullshitting us again?"

"In the long term, world's not going to be a poorer place if the Robinsons are dead," Munch was starting to lay it on a little thick for Craig's taste. "It's like the Nixon lawyers said: it's the coverup that nails you, not the crime."

"You're on the hook for two murders right now," Worden said, moving in closer. "You want to get out from under this. Your best bet: tell us the truth."

Juarez looked at him for a couple of moments. In that period of time, it seems like he was about to give them everything. Then something in his expression changed - subtle but definitely there. "Get me a lawyer."

 _Fuck._ They'd had the guy in the box for three hours more, and they were running out of time to charge him. Craig knew he'd been close, but now it was up to the lawyers.

"Can't you people ever make my life easy?"

Ed Danvers was a decent enough civil servant - he always looked even more tired than the cops did after a twenty-four hour shift, his suits always looked like they'd gone through bad dry cleaning, and he always seemed perpetually depressed. Considering he was supposed to be getting married in a month, you'd think that at least would give him a reason to smile occasionally, but Craig had yet to see him do it.

"You're telling us there isn't enough to charge this guy with murder?" Giardello demanded. "Oscar Juarez shot two men in cold blood."

"Yes, and defense exhibit 1 is going to be their criminal records. Exhibit 2 is going to be the guns you found. Then he'll show the pictures of the crime scene, you just deconstructed. By the time a slicker like Russom gets down, they'll be given Juarez a parade down Fayette."

"Maybe you should consider going into business with your fiancée," Worden couldn't help but say.

"It would certainly pay better than what make for the city," Danvers retaliated.

"You have the gun, he lied to the police over and over, he confessed to the murders," Munch reminded him.

"I'm not saying I'm not taking this to the grand jury," Danvers told them slowly. "Given the nature of the crime, the DA's office can't exactly ignore this one. I'm just telling you, it's going to be an uphill slog."

"Russom isn't interesting taking a plea?" Howard asked.

"Illegal weapons charge on Frederic Robinson, man two and probation for Lamar." Danvers said in his undertaker's tone.

"Why don't we just buy him a drink at the Waterfront and call it a day?" Munch was starting to sound more pissed than he'd been in the box. "Juarez has seen juries acquit defendants in similar situations in Miami and New York," Danvers reminded him. "He thinks he can walk away clean. Russom didn't even have to push him that hard to go to the grand jury."

Worden was starting to get more and more pissed himself. "There must be something that can be done."

Danvers looked at him strangely. "Wait a couple of more months. You'll get used to how slowly justice moves." He turned to Giardello. "We've got enough to hold him. None of the judges I know will grant bail for something this heinous. But like I said, you'd better bring me more, or there's a good chance Juarez will be back at his store, waiting for two more robbers."

Danvers walked off. Worden looked at Giardello. "Honestly, I thought closing my first murders would be more... satisfying."

Giardello seemed a little perplexed himself. "This is what Homicide is. You work a case as hard as you can. Sometimes you close it. Sometimes you don't. The thing is, whether you like it or not, there's always another one round the corner. All you can do is punch the clock, and wait."

There was truth to this. All the other detectives seemed to operate under this assumption - certainly Munch already had. He had walked back to his desk, and was already looking at a book.

"But that idealism. Stomp on it, hard. Otherwise, you'll burn out fast."

For the first time, Worden felt a pang of guilt. He'd been so consumed with the Robinson murders, he'd forgotten what Gaffney had wanted from him. Gee, at least for the moment, considered him one of his cops.

He watched as Julie began putting the Robinsons name on the board in black. Technically, that meant that it was time to move on.

"You can your change your desk now." Munch again.

"You're saying you don't mind me sitting at Russert's desk?"

"Not if you don't. You said that I was cursed. Maybe it's the furniture."

"That mean you wouldn't mind working a murder with me again?" Worden told him.

"I wouldn't go that far." Munch raised an eyebrow. "But you're much easier to look at than Frank is."

Indeed, Pembleton had been giving him the stink-eye for the last two days because he hadn't gotten a chance to work his first murder.

"That still doesn't mean I have any opinion of you at all."

Craig managed a cynical smile of his own. "Of course not."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"You know, Sarge, I realize I'm the new kid on the block, but I can investigate a murder on my own."

Kay gave one of her typical small smiles. "When I took the sergeants exam last year, I didn't think I'd be doing as much desk work. I have to help Gee with the paperwork, I have keep on top of where all the other detectives are, I have to coordinate with the DAs half the time. All that means, I barely get out on the street half the time of any other detective."

Worden considered this. "Hasn't hurt your clearance rate any."

This got a more genuine smile from Howard. "Quality always wins out over quantity."

"Is that your subtle way of offering to be the primary on this one?'

The smile turned more sardonic. "You picked up the phone, you take the murder. "

Worden knew the real reason she was grinning. Harbor police had fished a floater out of the river. Every indication was that the body had been there for at least a few days. He was privately hoping this turned out to be some kind of suicide, because of it wasn't, he was going to be spending days just trying to ID the victim, never mind solving the murder.

 _Great. I've been here little more than a month and I'm already thinking like a seasoned veteran._ "Still doesn't explain why you wanted to come out and help on what's likely to be a stone whodunit."

Kay grew serious. "You noticed how when the call came out, no one was particularly eager to ride with you?" After Craig nodded, she went on: "You know who Steve Crosetti was?'

Now was not the time to tell the sergeant Roger Gaffney's opinion of the man. "I know he worked Homicide and I know that he killed himself two years ago."

"Munch was the secondary on this case. He doesn't talk about it except to make jokes, but finding that bloated corpse that Steve became, it shook him to his core. It shook all of us. He avoids these kinds of calls whenever he can get away with it. As his superior, I don't approve. As one of Steve's fellow detectives, I don't blame him one bit."

Now Craig felt a bit ashamed about hoping that the floater had died by their own hand. "We're here."

The body had been found on the outskirts of the Patapsco river, near the same docks which had been the lifeblood of Baltimore for decades.

"Officer Rogers, please tell me we have some good news," he said as the uniform walked up to meet him.

"Depends on your definition of good, Detective." Rogers told him. "Victim is a Latino female, wallet still on the body. ID is an Angela Nunez."

"Well, now that we know who she is, do we have any idea how Miss Nunez came to deserve our attention?"

"That's gonna be a different story." Rogers told her. "Scheiner says based on decomp, she's been in the drink for at least two days, maybe three."

Sure enough, there was the M.E. who'd been supervising over dead bodies since the Eisenhower administration, looking over the late Miss Nunez. Worden and Howard were still twenty feet away, but the smell of rot was evident even from there. Worden reached for his handkerchief.

"Things like this make me glad I never learned how to swim," the crotchety coroner told them as they approached Nunez's body.

"There isn't any chance that our vic simply decided to take the polar bear challenge?" When Howard and Rogers looked at him strangely, Craig shrugged. "All right, I've been hanging around Munch a little too long."

"I'll have to get her on the table to know for sure, but my best guess is that this is wrongful death." Scheiner told them. He turned to the officers nearby. "Roll her."

Angela Nunez was now on her stomach, and even though he was still knew at this, Craig could see that there was a fair amount of congealed blood around the torso, along with a fairly large hole around the stomach. "That, my young friend, is an exit wound. I'll have to get her under the microscope, but my guess is, she took a shotgun at close range."

"There isn't any chance she floated down from Delaware or DC, is there?' Worden asked as he looked down at the body.

"What do I look like? Jacques Cousteau?" Scheiner's level of irritation barely changed a note. "And don't look for any help matching the bullets. They've either washed out, or they went clean through."

"Any good news, Scheiner?" Howard asked as she knelt beside Craig.

"Yeah. I had a great bran muffin this morning." Scheiner was, if anything more unfiltered than Munch could be.

Craig give a huge side. He could already see the name going up in red. "All right. Let's canvas, see if anybody heard or saw anything." Not that he expected to find anything. This was a literal dump job, and they were going to have to do a lot of OT just to find out where she had died.

"I'll check in with missing persons, see if anybody reported Miss Nunez." Howard got to her feet.

"You're just leaving me to handle this?" Craig said incredulously.

"You're the one who said he wanted to stand on his own two feet."

Isabel Nunez was twenty-four years old, and unfortunately for Craig, she lived in Baltimore. No husband, no kids. Her mother, Carla had reported her missing when she hadn't come home the night before.

"Did you have a good relationship with your daughter?" Worden asked her about ten minutes after Carla had had enough time to deal with the fact that her only child was dead. Of course, they never really dealt with it, but by now, they had to give the illusion of it.

"Of course I did." Carla asked, appalled.

"How long had she been gone before you reported her missing?" Howard asked.

"Half a day, maybe. It wasn't unusual for her to stay out all night with her friends. We would argue..." She trailed off. "We argued about her staying out so late."

"Who were some of the friends she stayed out with?"

"You don't really think... No, they couldn't have."

"Probably not," Craig assured her, "but if we're to find Angela's killer, any information that you or they give could be helpful."

She hesitated. 'There was this boy. He was three or four years younger than her. Very dark hair, always seemed to be looking right past you. Whenever I invited him in to see us, he never said anything." Carla paused again. "He frightened me a little. Sounds almost laughable."

"Do you remember this young man's name?" Worden asked.

"Luis. Luis Salmanaca. " Something about this name rang a bell with Craig, but he couldn't figure out what.

"How exactly did Angela know Luis?" Kay asked.

"She said that she met him at the Learning Annex at community college." Apparently, Angela had had to drop out of college in her sophomore year to take care of her family. She had spend as much of her time between her job as an au pair for some families and trying to get her degree in literature.

That was what her mother seemed to think anyway. But there was an element that was floating below the surface that Worden didn't want to press yet. Even though Angela Nunez had been born in Baltimore, her mother had emigrated to America from Colombia in the 1970s. And though the drug market in Baltimore was mostly African-American, the various cartels had been making a slow but steady impression on the drug market.

"Do you happen to know how we could find this Luis?"

"He worked at one of those coffee shops. Panera, I think."

The sinking feeling that Craig had been having about this case ever since he got here multiplied tenfold when he found out more about Luis Salmanaca. He didn't have a criminal record - at least not in Baltimore. That didn't, however, qualify him for sainthood. A little research on Interpol revealed that the Salmanaca name had been notorious in the South American drug cartels stretching back nearly twenty-five years. They had made quite an impression in the U.S, too, though most of their impression was in the American Southwest.

"So now, its looking like the Colombians are reaching out into Baltimore," Howard told Gee a few hours later.

"Any evidence that our victim was part of this drug ring?' Giardello asked.

"At our request, Scheiner did a more advanced toxicology report," Worden told them. "There were trace amounts of cocaine in Isabel Nunez's blood at the time of her death."

"Well, ain't that just dandy," Meldrick said. "We got enough of a headache with the damn heroin market in Charm City, now the damn Colombians are starting to make inroads.'

"Globalization, Meldrick," Munch told him. "Baltimore is finally becoming a player on the world stage."

"Yeah, I think rather have the O's make the playoffs."

Worden let this byplay roll off him. Besides, he knew Meldrick was still smarting from their latest escapade involving Luther Mahoney. Somehow, the slippery sonofabitch had managed to skate from a conspiracy charge three days earlier. "In any case, its looking like Angela Nunez got involved with the wrong people," Worden looked at the notes he'd taken. "Apparently, a few months ago, she really was serious about trying to earn enough money to get back into college. One of her friends introduced to somebody who said that she could make a lot of money if she would make some deliveries."

"Let me guess: said packages included the delivery of cocaine." Munch told him. "And after a few weeks, maybe even a month, she started sampling the packages."

"Could be, Munchkin, just as likely she decided to cut out the middleman and start selling the packages herself." Lewis replied. "Either way, we get the end result, she ends up full of holes at the bottom of the Patapsco."

"Your concern for this girl's wellbeing is touching," Worden told them.

"I realize you've barely been here more than a month," Munch reminded him, "but I've been averaging two similar murders a month for at least fourteen years. Now, the particulars may change - and I'll admit its a little different to have a Latina be the victim instead of an African-American - but it really doesn't matter. Drug murders are essentially the same; only the details matter."

"Y-you know, John, one of the things I-I didn't miss when I was in my hospital bed," Pembleton, who had been remarkably quiet through all this, finally chose to speak up. "Your sardonic w-wit."

There was a moment of silence at this. In all the months Frank had been sitting at his desk, he had never joked about his own mental failings since coming back from the stroke. He must truly have been feeling better being out on the street.

"Angela Nunez was murdered. Now, I agree with you on the point the details don't matter. But that's it. She may have been a junkie near the end, but she deserves to have her death avenged as much as anybody else on that board."

There was the almighty Pembleton. Even Worden couldn't help but be a little impressed by that. "That's exactly what I've been talking about," he told the others. "I am going to find who killed Isabel, and truthfully, Frank, I could use the help. Want to help me bring in this Luis Salmanaca?"

"Oh, G-God no." Frank told him. "I j-just got my weapon back, and you want me to help you bring in a Colombian kid with a shotgun? N-not your best move. Besides, I still have to finish the paperwork on the Clifton triple."

"Bayliss is the primary on that case," Howard reminded him.

"H-he's testifying in the Radcliff trial," Pembleton told her. "Said now, that I was back on the job, I had to do the minor things that I'd been a-avoiding."

"Fine, I guess we're on our own." Craig turned to Howard. "I've got the last known address for Luis. Let's see if we can shake his tree."

Maybe Craig would've been a little more cynical had he been on the job longer. But the Salmanaca interview shook him a lot more than it should have.

Salmanaca was a little more than a teenager, but he seemed like someone who was more of the Starkweather mode than anybody else. From the moment he and Kay had knocked on his door to the second hour of their interrogation of him, the kid had barely said six words., and only once had he bothered to string more than two together. For the most part, all he did was stare straight ahead.

This would've been unsettling enough. But this wasn't the vacant stare of an idiot or an addict. There was something much colder in it. Somehow, this seventeen-year old boy seemed to be taken not just the measure of Craig or Kay or even the Homicide unit, but rather the whole Baltimore PD, and found it lacking. Something not even worthy of his time to engage with.

By the end of the first ten minutes, Craig knew that they were busting their head against the wall. They hadn't been able to get a warrant to search the Salmanaca residence, and the kid clearly wasn't stupid enough to leave either a shotgun or coke in plain view. And it was very clear that nothing was going to get this guy to confess. Fuck, they couldn't even get him to open his mouth.

Finally, after nearly ninety minutes and no real reaction from Salmanaca, Craig finally left the Box, and went back into the observation room. There, Gee and Pembleton were waiting.

"If you've come to tell me I've got nothing, I figured that part out an hour ago," he told them grimly. "If you've got any sage words of wisdom, though..."

"Be a waste of time." Pembleton told him. "He's not going to give us a damn thing."

"So I'm barking up the wrong tree here?"

'I didn't say that. Kid's definitely responsible."

Worden looked at Salmanaca through the glass, where he was still staring dead ahead. "What about Rule No.4?" Bayliss had told him that a few weeks ago - a guilty man, when left alone in the interrogation room, will go to sleep.

"Every rule has its exception," Frank told him. "What you're looking at is that rarest of breeds. The stone cold killer. Someone who could shoot his girlfriend over the breakfast table, then go to the couch, turn on his TV, and watch the Ravens game without even a hesitation."

"So how do we get him?" Worden asked.

"We don't." Giardello told him grimly. "We have no evidence, no witnesses, no proof at all that Salmanaca was even there when Angela Nunez died. We have no choice but to cut him loose."

Craig wasn't sure he was hearing right. "This guy's a Colombian national. The moment he leaves the station, there's nothing that's going to stop him from hopping the next plane to Bogotá."

"I don't like this any more than you, Detective, but the fact of the matter is, we have nothing to hold him on." Giardello looked as disgusted as Craig felt. "You can hold him another ten hours without charging him, but without any real evidence, we can't even do a thorough search of his residence."

Worden turned his attention back to Salmanaca. "You know, part of me wants to just walk in there, cuff him to the table, and leave one hell of an ass-whupping on him. And if it were twenty years ago, I'd probably do just that."

"What's stopping you now?" Gee asked.

"Because I think that bastard wants me to do just that." Then Craig admitted something else. "Wouldn't make me feel better, either. That wouldn't make him talk. This man just doesn't care."

Craig had never been much of a drinker, and even admitting this case was going to be in red for a very long time, he still didn't feel like drowning his sorrows; But considering that Munch and Lewis had invited him out to the Waterfront for the first time since joining the unit, he decided he might as well jump at the opportunity.

"You know, when we invited you down here, the presumption was that you would get hammered," Munch told him. "We don't earn a living by having our customers nurse a single beer for an hour."

"Part of the reason that people come to bars is to contemplate the state of the world," Craig said, absent-mindedly. "Give me credit for that much at least."

Munch looked at him. "No one's denying that it was a shitty case," he told him. "But you've seen how we deal with it. Pembleton and Bayliss, they'll brood about it. Frank will go home to his wife, Tim'll talk about leaving Homicide for a few hours, then they'll go back to work. Cops like me and Meldrick, we'll work here at the Waterfront at night, watch alcoholics drown their sorrows, move on to the next dead body."

"That's your sage advice. Find a way to deal with it, then come back to work the next day?" Craig shook his head. "You know, for a Jewish guy, you're a shitty rabbi."

"I've never been much of a mentor. I'm not sure I like doing it now." Munch poured a small beer. "At least your guy didn't have the stones to gloat when it was all over. Luther Mahoney came in and tried to buy a drink for the house."

"Somehow, I don't think the Salmanaca family is the gloating type." Craig finished his beer. "My guess is, he's going to go underground for awhile. At least, that's what I'm hoping he ends up doing."

"This is Charm City. Things never go the way they planned." Munch told him.

"What I'm afraid he'll do is try and figure out who fingered him for killing Angela Nunez in the first place. Then, if he figures it out, the trail will eventually lead back to her mother." Craig shook his head. "Either way, there's no way this guy's finished killing. Not by a long shot."

"Maybe you'll get another chance at him then," Munch told him. "God knows, we've certainly gotten more shots at Luther."

"I want to believe that. I do." Worden shook his head. "And I know that I'm a rookie and you've got no reason to take me seriously. But I just got this gut feeling. This is as close as we got to Luis. We'll never find him again. One way or the other."

Munch looked at him. "That's way too philosophical for eleven-twenty on a Wednesday."

"Isn't drunken logic part of running a bar?"

"You're nowhere near drunk enough to be considering that."

"Well, then maybe I should just have another beer."

 **January 1997**

The holidays tended to be a depressing time, but that generally led to more people killing themselves rather than offing their neighbors. Regardless, the last month hadn't exactly been much of a thrill from any perspective.

By far, the most depressing news had come when Ed Danvers fiancee, Meryl Hanson had been shot in a robbery where she had been trying on her wedding gown. Pembleton had caught the case as primary, and he'd managed to bring in a suspect, Julius Cummings. But despite his best efforts, he had not been able to get Cummings to confess, and the next day, the suspect had hung himself in his cell. Whether it had been because he was guilty or because he felt trapped was a question that would never be answered, and the end result was the same - there would be no justice for her or Danvers, who had been on sabbatical since then, according to Howard.

There had been no murders on New Year's Eve, but a bomb of a different sort had gone off. Brodie had apparently been making a documentary on the Homicide Unit for the past year, and he had shown it to everybody on the rare night when the phones didn't ring. Because he had appeared in it the least of all the detectives, Worden had to admit that it had been stylish, well shot, and extremely well filmed. But he knew just from looking at it that Gaffney would have a hard time with it, and that had nothing to do with the fact that he had finally been identified as the 'Lunch Bandit'. Without any formal consent, Brodie had sold it to PBS, and now the entire unit had been pissed at him, though no doubt some of their memories had faded when the phones started ringing right at 12:01 AM.

The only thing that seemed certain was the fact that he was now working with Munch. Despite the continual kvetching that seemed to perpetually come from him, Munch was a better detective than anyone seemed to give him credit for being. He'd even started to consider the endless anecdotes that the man seemed to have up his sleeve, as endearing.

"Horace Vines, age twenty." Dr. Cox told them as the two of them walked up to their next crime scene. Well, crime scene was a bit of an exaggeration. Vines was lying in an alley with a bullet in his head.

"So our only witness, Miss Valencia," Worden was telling Munch, "she says that she was feeding her cat when she saw this car pull up to the side of the road, and throw the body of young Mr. Vines out into the alley and then tear ass out, going at least ninety."

"Could she identify the car?" Munch asked.

"It was two a.m. Best she could say was that it was a dark blue sedan. It was moving so fast, she couldn't identify anybody in the car."

"Wonderful. When we find this blue sedan, we can pull it over for speeding as well as second degree murder." Munch signed. "Well, given the fact that the very late Mr. Vines has pretty obvious track marks on his wrist, this is clearly yet another in a series of drug-related murders. Perhaps I'll call it my 'Red Period' after the color that has been pervaded under my name for the last couple of months."

"I'll admit, that is one way of looking at it." Craig told Munch. "But then again, you might yet see some good luck. While I was canvassing the rest of the neighborhood, hoping against hope that lightning might strike twice, I did find something even better."

"Killer threw his wallet out of the car?"

"You could say that." Craig pointed toward the traffic stop. "One of the newly installed traffic cams. If the car really was going as fast as Miss Valencia says it was, then we have a definite lead."

"I've never been so grateful that Big Brother is watching." Munch said.

"You've got to get off this anti-authority kick, Munch." Worden told them. "You're murder police. Technically, you _are_ Big Brother."

Technology in the Baltimore P.D. was second rate at best, but there was a fair amount of evidence that at least there was some effort to improve it. The traffic cam that had been monitoring the intersection seemed to be working perfectly, and after about twenty minutes of viewing tapes on Brodie's machine, they caught the sedan they were looking for. At 2:11 A.M., a blue Toyota Corolla was seen pulling to a stop, then tearing out at roughly seventy-four miles per hour.

The traffic cam caught the car, and the license plate.

The owner was a Horatio Lloyd, forty-three, no criminal record. It was hard to picture this man being the one behind the wheel, much less the murder.

When Munch and Worden visited him, eight hours into their investigation, he was a little shocked to see cops. "You send this many detectives after a stolen car?"

A sinking feeling began to form in Worden's stomach. "Mr. Lloyd, do you have any children?"

"No," Lloyd told them. "Never married, haven't had a girlfriend in three years. Just ain't got the time."

So much for that particular angle. Somehow, telling this man that his car had been tied to a drug-related shooting didn't lend itself easily to Craig.

"Mr. Lloyd, when did you report your car stolen?" Munch asked.

"About three days ago," Lloyd told them earnestly. "I went down to auto, filed a report, they said that they'd get back to me, but I ain't getting my hopes up to ever seeing it again. Though honestly, I don't know why anyone would want to steal a car that shitty."

It was a fair point. Even from the grainy video, it was clear that this particular Toyota needed a paint job, and had smoke pouring from the exhaust. It had been remarkable that the driver had managed to get it past forty without it collapsing.

"Where did you keep it?" Craig asked.

"I kept it in my guest mansion. Where the fuck do you think I kept it? On the damn street." Lloyd was getting prickly for some reason. "Oh, I know this city's gone to hell in a handbasket, but I kept it there for nine years, and nobody did a thing to it. Guess I finally drew the short straw."

"Can you think of anybody who'd want to steal your car? Anybody who maybe expressed an interest in it over the past couple of weeks?" Munch knew he was grasping at straws, but he was desperate for a lead.

Lloyd sighed. "Only person who even looked at it twice was my nephew Roger. 'Bout a week ago, he offered to have it fixed."

"Why'd you turn him down?"

"You're not supposed to say this about your kin, but that boy's always been trouble. My brother's a good man, but there's just nothing he can do. Every other week Roger's always disappeared for a few days, never telling anybody what he's been doing, always showing up with a new girlfriend or something. He offered to fix my car, I ask him where the hell he'd get the money."

Now was the time to ask the question. "Does your nephew use drugs?"

Lloyd drew back. "I'm not about to say something that'll get Roger locked up. I may not trust the kid, but Sammy does." He paused. "But off the record. Wouldn't stun me."

Roger Lloyd did have a sheet. Most of it was low-level stuff, even for Baltimore - possession, possession with intent to distribute. But apparently, he had a history of running with some pretty disreputable crowds - not as bad as the Mahoney organization, but bad enough.

Finding him, just to ask him questions, was another task and a half. He wasn't at his address, or at his fathers. So Munch and Craig went down to talk to Terri Stivers, their narcotics detectives who seemed to have a better grasp of how the shady underbelly of Baltimore worked, at least as far as Meldrick was concerned.

Stivers had heard of Roger Lloyd, but only in connection with a couple of other minor players in this town. "He used to run with Drac Forunato before he took on in the head," she told them. "Ever since then, he's been acting as a runner for a couple of the lower level players with Prop Joe."

"He the type that would be involved in this kind of killing?" Munch asked.

"I gotta tell you, Roger Lloyd always seemed to be the kind of guy who was going to catch a bullet before he put one in somebody else." Stivers told them. "Guy had more balls than he had sense."

"So you think if he was involved in Horace Vines' murder, he'd be telling everybody and his mother?' Craig asked.

"Based on everything you've been telling me, Vines was just another one of these guys who got into deep with the wrong crowd," Stivers admitted. "Half a dozen of these guys get aced every night. The only reason this case has a chance of going black is because they were stupid enough to dump the body in an alley rather than a crackhouse."

"But for a guy like Roger Lloyd, this is probably the biggest thing he's ever been a part of," Craig said thoughtfully. "Only question is, who would he tell?"

"Better question is, where would we find him?" Munch reminded them both.

"All I can tell you is that he usually works at the Druitt Hill Towers," Stivers told him. "Check them out first, see if you can get a glimpse of him."

There weren't a lot of towers any more in Druitt Hill, being part of the endless urban renewal Baltimore kept promising, but never actually delivering on.

And Tower was always something of a misnomer, as far as Craig was concerned. 'Tower' always seemed to summon up the image of some kind of edifice - a castle or the World Trade Center or that large image that seemed to be at the center of Stephen King's fiction. The Druitt Hill Towers had always been decrepit, and ever since heroin had become a part of Baltimore, seemed to be just a synonym for slum. One was reluctant to use that word, though, because it could so accurately describe what most of West Baltimore had become by now.

Musing about wordplay was more up Munch's alley. Craig supposed that he was doing that because it was more satisfying than considering the effort of finding Roger Lloyd. Corner boys were less likely to talk to cops than anybody else. And even when they made the concession that they were interesting more in dead bodies than they were packages and vials, they were just as likely to remain deaf, dumb and blind.

After nearly ninety minutes of asking and not getting answers, even Worden's enthusiasm for the chase had begun to flag. Then they ran into this wide-eyed man who was looking towards the lights, not high but definitely on the way. On an impulse, they talked to him.

"You're looking for Roger?" the dazed man said, in a pleasant enough tone. "He was here a couple of hours ago scoring. Said he'd come to a lot of money yesterday, and he wanted to go celebrate."

"How'd he get the money?" Craig asked.

"He said he did some big job yesterday. Ship finally came in."

"Where'd he go to celebrate?" Munch asked.

"Highland Town. Near Albert's." Albert's was a seedy bar - well, most bars in that area were seedy.

"Let's hope we can find the bastard." Munch said, as they called it in.

They did - not quite as they planned though.

As was the case so many when Homicide needed help, Munch had called for a radio car to go to the scene, try and get a bead on their suspect. The radio car answered and, in a rarity for the city of Baltimore, actually beat Munch and Worden there by ten full minutes. By the time they were on the scene, it was all over.

Westby, who had always been a competent patrolman, spotted their Lloyd coming out of the bars, shouting and pretty clearly wasted. Then he started waving a nine millimeter around. Westby got out of the car, drew his weapon, and told Lloyd to put the gun down and his hands in the air.

Lloyd started laughing, and fired a shot in the side of the bar. Westby identified himself as a police officer again, and Lloyd shot over his head. Westby then returned fire, and put a bullet in him.

Westby was considerably shaken up by the time Craig got to him, even though it was pretty clear than even the assholes at IAD would have a hard time writing this up as anything bit a clean shooting. There had actually been two witnesses to see him - a bullet had whizzed past him as well - Westby was more than willing to own up to the shooting, and the fact that both he and Lloyd were African-American made it unlikely that there would be problems in the press.

Still, Craig had been more than willing to stand up for him, and said he would be more than willing to be primary, something that most detectives didn't sign up for.

"Look at what the late Mr. Lloyd was using as his weapon of choice," Munch told them. "Nine mm, just like the one that killed Horace Vines."

"Gee'll be so thrilled." Craig said sadly. "He loves it when murders solve themselves."

Munch clearly caught the tone. "If you want, I'll make the condolence call to Roger's father," he said slowly.

"We still got a little while before we have to handle that part of it." Craig told them. "Besides, we want to make sure we get this right."

Westby appeared pretty shaken up, which was understandable. "I told him to surrender. Three times. He wouldn't put the gun down."

"It'll work out, Paul," Craig said softly. "You do know I have to ask for your gun."

Westby still seemed in a trance as he handed it over. "Call the Lieutenant. Tell him we have a police involved shooting. Gently."

For the first time in a week, Worden thought of Gaffney. The captain probably wouldn't have thought twice about rolling Westby over the coals if it suited his purposes. Not because he gave a shit about Roger Lloyd, or even because he cared about the optics. No, he'd be concerned that this made his department look bad. That was who Gaffney was.

Then he considered Al Giardello. He'd known the Lieutenant for three months, or an eighth of the time he'd known Roger Gaffney, and yet it had been obvious within the first week that Giardello was far better, not simply as a superior, but as a human being. How the hell had he been passed over, not once but twice for Barnfather's former position? He didn't understand the politics of the job at all.

Suddenly, he came to a personal decision. Gaffney may have gotten him his job, but he sure as hell wasn't worthy of his allegiance. Craig decided from now on he'd try to prove that he may have gotten this job under false pretenses, but he sure as shit was going to keep it. That started with making sure officers like Westby got protected first.

Craig would have no idea how much shit he was going to end up taking until months later, and even then, he would realize he couldn't have done it any other way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Craig may still have been learning about the behaviors of his fellow detectives, but he could tell that there had been a lot of internal strife in the next month.

For one thing, after nearly four months of being held in departmental limbo, Kellerman was finally cleared by the grand jury of any wrongdoing when he was in arson. But you would've had to have been blind and deaf to see that he was anything but okay. At the gathering at the Waterfront to celebrate, Mike had taken the occasion to say that he hadn't taken any money, but given how little support he had received from the squad, he might as well have. Worden knew he should have said something, anything, but Kellerman then stormed out of the bar.

The next day, it was clear that Kellerman was still emotionally hung over, and he wasn't helped one bit by the fact that Gaffney had walked right up to him in front of the entire squad, and asked how much the Rolands had given. Kellerman blew him off, and then pushed a file cabinet over. If Craig hadn't been sure that he'd made the right decision, that pretty much solidified it.

It didn't help matters much that Kellerman had caught a shooting that tied right back to Luther Mahoney - a Korean grocer who had chased some of the corner boys away from his store, and then gotten shot in the heart for his trouble. Three days later, Kellerman went on sabbatical, probably because he needed time to clear his head from the last few months.

Simultaneously, it was clear that something was going wrong with the partnership between Bayliss and Pembleton. Ever since Frank had come back in the rotation, they'd seemed to be arguing a lot. No one else in the squad thought this was a big deal - it seemed to be the center of how the two best detectives in Homicide worked. But it seemed to be more hostile this time, and for the last couple of weeks, the two had not worked a case together.

This didn't seem like it was going to affect Craig that much, until the squad caught its first red ball of the year.

"We have an officer down in Calvert County," Giardello bellowed. "Everybody goes. Frank, you're the primary. "

Everybody, of course, was something of a misnomer. Meldrick was out investigating a shooting that had taken place earlier in the shift. But Howard, who was almost never out on cases, grabbed a car, and so that Munch. Craig was about to walk down with him, when Giardello added: "Worden, you're secondary."

Craig was surprised. Pembleton was pissed. "I can handle this myself," he told Gee.

"Frank, we need all hands on deck. And Worden used to walk that beat. I don't need to tell you what happens if this isn't solved fast."

Pembleton looked like he wanted to argue, but he knew better. "Fine. But I drive."

Craig had worked secondary with every other cop, except for Lewis and, obviously, Kellerman, but he'd gotten to know Frank well enough that you didn't try to engage him in meaningless conversation anywhere. Which is why he was a little surprised when Pembleton initiated it.

"This is a one-time thing," he said brusquely. "If you see something that can help, say it. If you see anything, tell me."

"And there's the infamous Frank Pembleton prickishness," Worden couldn't help but say. "Look, I may be the new guy, but I don't need to be fucking babied."

"There's no time for hand-holding," Pembleton said. "Man in blue is down. Gee says we work together to catch his killer, we work together. But don't think for a moment that this is going anywhere."

"Look, I get it." Worden sneered. "The last new guy you worked with you ended up being your partner for four years. You don't like forming attachments, you're Frank Pembleton the lone wolf. I'm fine working with Munch. When this case is over, you can go back to being the warm, charming, convivial, friend to man that everyone in the Baltimore PD knows you to be. Got it?"

Frank's expression didn't change so much as a scintilla. "I already like working with you more than Meldrick." That was the last thing they said until they arrived at the crime scene.

The shocks stared coming the moment they arrived on the scene. "The victim is Officer James Haybert," Rogers told them.

For the briefest of moments Worden forgot that he was a Homicide detective and walked to the body. Cox was there, which wasn't a huge shock given the importance of the victim. The victim was lying face down on the ground.

"Could you move the victims face?" Worden asked, feeling like he was in a trance.

Cox considered this for a moment. "Do you know the victim?"

"Maybe."

Cox was even more professional than Pembleton was, but she had a way of being able to read people. She nodded to her assistant, who moved the officer's face.

"Damn it. Fuck," Worden told him. "I knew this guy. He had just started to work foot patrol before I got promoted to QRT. He came out of the Western."

Cox had the ability to be more sensitive than most of the other professional. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"How many shots?" Craig said slowly.

"Two in the chest, looks like a .38."

"Hey, hey." Pembleton had caught up to them, and he was seriously pissed. "What are you doing moving the body?"

The mask was back for both of them. "I was just telling Detective Worden that Officer Haybert was shot twice."

"What about his service weapon?" Pembleton demanded. "He doesn't seem to be wearing it."

"It's still in his car," By now, Howard and Munch had caught up with them, and completed their own minor reconnaissance. "Keys were still in the car, too."

"Was he still on patrol?" Craig had managed to shake himself out of his stupor.

"His shift ended as of an hour ago," Munch told him. "Watch commander didn't know what had happened to keep him away from the station."

Worden looked around. "Well, here are what looks to be three shell casings," he said, kneeling and pulling out an evidence bag. "I suppose it would've been asking too much for us to have any witnesses to what happened here."

"Units have been canvassing for thirty minutes." Howard replied. "So far they've got squat."

"Well, let's spread out the search grid." Pembleton told them. "See if we can find any clue as to what the hell Officer Haybert was doing out here at this hour."

Worden looked around. "Come on, Frank. This is an open air drug market. People in this neighborhood would be less likely to talk, even if a cop hadn't been killed here."

"What are you said, Detective?" Pembleton put a slur on that word. Maybe it was just an after effect of the stroke. Maybe. "That we should go home? Hope the killer has a guilty conscience and decides to turn himself in?"

"I knew James Haybert, Detective Pembleton," A definite slur came from Craig on the word 'detective'. "I want his killer brought to justice as badly as you do. But we all know that, short of bamboo under the fingernails, we're not going to get anything out of the people at the windows. Now, I'll go through with because he's a cop, but I'm not going to be expecting miracles. And neither should you."

"I don't believe in miracles. Just hard work."

The next half-hour was extremely frustrating, though Craig didn't know whether it was because he knew the victim, because he was working with Frank Pembleton, or because he turned out to be right. He interviewed half a dozen passerby, none of whom would admit to seeing or hearing anything unusual. An hour into the investigation, they had no more evidence than when they'd gotten started with.

And just to make matters worse, the press had gotten wind of it, and had started to harangue the officers on scene. Pembleton had already shoved off Dawn Daniels and Matt Besser, and he had no doubt the other affiliates would be moments behind. Not for the first time, Worden was glad that Pembleton was the primary. He wanted to get Haybert's name in black as much as anybody, but Frank could more than handle the vultures that were circling.

"Detective Pembleton." Worden looked up, and was, for the briefest of moments, taken aback. A beautiful, thirtyish, Asian woman in an overcoat was standing just a few feet away.

"I'm Elizabeth Wu, police reporter with the _Sun,"_ And Craig immediately deflated. Another vulture, albeit a more attractive one. Frank was, if anything, more pissed than before, and told her to get the hell of his crime scene.

Then Wu immediately recited Haybert's name, the beat he walked, the weapon he'd been shot with, and the fact that his service piece had discharged two bullets. Despite himself, Craig was impressed. It took a lot of work and teeth pulling to get that far in their investigation, and that was while flashing a badge.

Giardello, surprisingly, was able to handle her with a bit more tact. Then again, considering how long the Lieutenant had been able to serve as a buffer between Homicide and the press, maybe it shouldn't have come as much of a shock.

Wu walked off, satisfied for the moment. "How long has she been working here?" Worden found himself asking.

"Not that long," Munch told him. "Just a few weeks."

"I ought to lock her up," Pembleton was never going to be won over.

"Given how good a job she did and getting information, maybe you should consider changing your approach." Craig couldn't help but say. "You know what they say about trapping more flies with honey than with vinegar."

Pembleton just snarled. "All right. We've gotten everything we can with the canvas. Might as well head back in, see what the ME can find out."

Given that this was a red ball, nobody slept that night. Both Gaffney and Barnfather made visits to the scene, gave the traditional speeches expresses that James Haybert was a fine officer and that they would catch his killer, and then told Giardello to do more, and to make sure that the media didn't get any more hooks into the scene than they already did.

When they finally got back to the squadroom around dawn, Craig finally had the time to think about the fact that a cop he had known was dead. He hadn't known James Haybert that well - he'd been promoted to QRT about a month after the cop had joined the Western - but he was still someone that he'd had a beer with a couple of times, and had even been to the occasional barbecue with. It was still something of a shock - he'd been working at Homicide for just over four months, and only now was he beginning to realize the real significance of the fact that it meant a person died.

However, it soon became clear that the Haybert case was going to have far more ramification than even the ripples of a cop being shot. They started when Munch told them that when they searched his car, they had found four vials of blacktop heroin. Admittedly, there was a possibility that Haybert hadn't yet logged this into evidence control, but even the newest cop in Homicide - which Craig was - knew that they'd have to proceed under the possibility that this killing might be drug-related in quite another way.

Unfortunately, Craig then encountered Bayliss in the coffee room, where he was reading the piece on James Haybert's murder. The one that had Elizabeth Wu's name as a byline. Admittedly, it was a very good piece - it painted James the way Craig had remembered him, an officer still trying to talk dealers out of their jobs, who didn't like getting into gunfights, and who had ended up another victim of the drug war.

"I'll admit, she's a hell of a writer," Worden told Bayliss and Munch. "Let's just hope the front desk puts her on to another murder."

Munch was good enough to fill Tim in on what they'd found.

"How sure are you of this?" Bayliss asked.

"Frank's running down to the ME trying to get Cox to rush the toxicology," Craig admitted. "I'm really hoping she doesn't find anything."

"How well did you know him?"

"You know, I really wish people would stop talking as if we had gone to grade school together," Craig's frustration was finally starting to boil over. "We spoke maybe a half dozen times before I joined QRT, I hadn't spoken to him since I joined Homicide." He paused. "I kinda wish I'd called to tell him that. All he could think of was getting his shield."

"No one wants to think the worst of their fellow officers," Bayliss told him. "But the truth is, there is the occasional bad apple. I really hope Haybert isn't one of them."

Soon, however, it became clear that things were going to get worse. For one thing, Elizabeth Wu showed up again, and now she had even more pointed questions. Frank's reaction was not much different than his first one - he told Wu to get the hell out. Giardello handled with more equipoise, and invited all of them - Craig, Pembleton, Howard, and Wu into his office for a private conversation.

"A few hours ago, I got a call who told me that James Haybert bought four vials of blacktop heroin from a dealer. An hour later, he comes back, screaming that the drugs are bad. He fires two shots, and the dealers shoots back in self-defense."

"Who was your source?" Pembleton demanded.

"The press shield laws exist for a reason, Detective." Wu fired back.

It took a brave person to stare Pembleton down, especially because he never seemed to flinch. He didn't do it now, saying he was going to get a court order from Danvers.

Once again, Gee used his velvet touch to smooth things over. By convincing Wu to go on deep background, he managed to tell her that the story about the heroin vials was true.

Wu seemed a little stunned at this, realizing that she was actually talking to a witness of the murder. Then came the realization that they had known this since last night, and that the story that had been in the paper was complete bullshit.

"We didn't know whether the vials hadn't yet been logged into evidence control," Craig had told her reluctantly

"Doesn't change the fact that I wrote a story on a hero who was actually a heroin addict," Wu seemed more pissed at herself rather than at them.

"If your source calls us again with any further information, do the right thing." Pembleton told her. "Pass it along to us."

"I'm not here to do you're job for you, Detective," Wu's ferocious manner was back. "Seems to me, you're not doing a great job yourself."

"Maybe I will get that subpoena."

"All we're asking," Giardello said, without his voice changing at all, "is that if your source calls us again, you consider whether justice outweighs the public right to know."

Wu got up. "I'll see you around, Lieutenant."

The second she left the office, Howard went " Well."

"I still think I should've locked her up," Pembleton snapped.

"Of course you don't like her, Frank." Worden found himself saying. "She's you."

"What?"

"Oh, I grant you, she's a woman, and she's Chinese, which may make her a little harder to recognize. Doesn't change the fact she's you. And considering how hard it is for the rest of us to get along with you, I'm not surprised that you can't either."

"Who's you?" Howard asked, just as playfully.

"Wu."

"I don't have to take this," Frank said, and stormed out of Gee's office.

"I'm just saying, maybe you should consider a makeover, Frank," Worden knew it was dangerous to tease the dragon, but he couldn't help himself. "Just think how many more suspects would be willing to get in the box with you."

"I've changed my mind," Pembleton said, as he put on his coat and the gray fedora he wore. "You're even more annoying than Meldrick."

"Where the fuck are you going, Pembleton?" Craig demanded, suddenly serious again. "Like it or not, I'm still the secondary on this case. And unless you've got any valid idea how to chase down this anonymous source, we are still nowhere when it comes to finding who killed Haybert."

"I'm going to see Danvers. Find out what we need to do to force this hyena to reveal her source to us."

"She did make it very clear that she took her first amendment rights very seriously," Howard reminded him. "So I think you need to pursue this case by regular means."

'Meaning what exactly?' Craig asked.

"Do another canvas. See if the arrival of daylight has gotten anybody to refresh their memories." Howard told her. "I know it seems like we're beating a dead horse here, but we have to at least try police work before we rip apart the Constitution."

For a moment, it looked like Pembleton was going to push this. Then he gritted his teeth. "Fine. But that means everybody comes. Munch, Bayliss, you too."

Tim looked a little surprised, and Craig was too. This was practically the first time that Pembleton had acknowledged his former partner's existence since the two had broken up their partnership more than a month earlier.

Nevertheless, it seemed a fellow cops death trumped their current squabble. Bayliss got up, and they headed out.

Usually follow up canvasses were nearly as fruitless. But on this occasion, they managed to catch a break. A grandmother type had been roused from a troubled rest, and said that before Haybert had been shot, she had spotted one of the local corner boys, a Matthew Nyerere about ten minutes from before Haybert had been shot.. Nyerere was in the system for dealing.

Unfortunately, it was becoming increasingly clear that the Sun seemed determined to undermine them. The paper had gone forward with the story that Haybert had bought four vials of blacktop heroin before being shot, and now it was becoming increasingly clear, even after Cox's quick toxicology revealed the bad news, that Haybert was at least using, and possibly dealing.

Despite everything that had happened over the past twelve hours, it seemed very clear that the department was, at least for now, standing by its fallen officer. But the bosses, unable to turn on the dead, were raging against the living. Barnfather had been in the office, and had made it very clear to Gee, that if the lieutenant didn't do something about Elizabeth Wu, he would do so.

Then, about thirty minutes after that, Craig received a call from Captain Gaffney. "This is turning into a colossal clusterfuck for the department," he told him in his typical crude manner.

"You don't think I know that?" Craig asked. "Look, we're closing in on a suspect. It's going to be just a matter of time before he's in custody, and you can go back to giving Haybert a departmental funeral."

"Really? What about this reporter, this Elizabeth Wu?"" Gaffney demanded. "The Deputy Commissioner wants her covering the wedding beat."

"You really want to get into a pissing contest with the Sun? I've read the way they cover the department; there's no way we can outmaneuver them."

Gaffney actually seemed to be considering this for a moment "How long until the suspect is in custody?"

"It's a matter of time." Just then, Craig recognized a familiar face. "I might be able to find a way to handle this. But right now, you and the Colonel need to hold back."

He managed to get rid of Gaffney after a few more minutes, then walked over to Elizabeth Wu, who was currently being admonished by Bayliss for the follow-up that had been in the Sun's morning edition.

"Excuse me, Miss Wu?" Craig walked up to her. "I'm Detective Worden. We met at the crime scene. I'm the secondary on the Haybert shooting."

'Really? Have there been any updates?" Wu seemed to be putting her reporter hat back on.

This was not going to be easy. "Could I, uh, buy you a cup of coffee?"

"I feel that I have to apologize for my partner," he said about five minutes later as they were coming out of the Daily Grind. "On his best day, he's an officious prick. A brilliant detective, but an officious prick."

"I'm a reporter, Detective Worden," Wu reminded him. "I've got a thick skin. Add to that the fact that he's in the middle of a red ball, I wasn't exactly expecting to be treated with kid gloves."

"I kind of figured we might be able to talk more on an equal footing." Craig said slowly. "You just got assigned to cover Homicide. And I'm still the new guy. I've only been in Homicide five months, and I got to tell you, morale hasn't exactly been a picnic before the shooting. That said, I think there's got to be a way that we can help each other."

"How's that?"

 _Here goes nothing. "_ Miss Wu -"

"Elizabeth. If we're going to be talking personally, we might as well use first names."

"All right, Elizabeth. I knew James Haybert. At least, I thought I did. He was a decent man, and a good cop. What you printed in your first story sounded like the man I knew." He hesitated. "Then I learned about the heroin, and from what your source told us, its sounding like I didn't know the man at all. Maybe I never did."

For a moment, he wondered how Wu would respond. "I didn't want to run the story," she finally said. "I thought that there were some parts missing, and I didn't think it painted a fair picture of what might have had happened. But my editor, he said we print what we know, and we worry about whether its the truth the next day. Now I'm beginning to feel that I may have written myself into a corner."

"Meaning what?"

"My source called me again three hours ago. He told me that he's worried about what's going to happen. He's afraid that the minute he reappears he's going to end up getting shot."

This was a very legitimate concern. The Baltimore PD was long past the days where if you dreamed about shooting a cop, you walked into a station and apologized. But Craig couldn't help but be reminded of what happened to a skell named Kenny Damon almost a year. He'd garroted a retired cop in a graveyard, and had been arrested a few days later. But due to jury indifference, he'd been acquitted. A week after that, his body had been found with a bullet in his head. The cop's son had killed him. There were more than a few old timers who thought that Jake Rodzinski should've walked away from what had happened. Craig hadn't been one of them, but he did think there had been an injustice to it all. Similarly, he wouldn't have minded if Nyerere did something funny while in custody, and ended up being found dead in his cell.

"I won't pretend that's not a possibility," Craig said slowly. "But I have to tell you, the longer he stays out there, the more likely it is that's gonna happen. Do you think that your source is the shooter?"

"I didn't want to believe it at first," Wu said slowly. "But this guy knows too much about what happened. I think he has to be."

Craig knew he was going down a slippery slope. It was one thing for the Lieutenant to have a relationship with the _Sun._ The bosses might not like it, but as long as he danced the dance, there was no way they could really punish him for it. It was quite another thing for an ordinary detective to even have a nodding relationship with someone in the press. Frank Pembleton might be the most outspoken about it, but he knew that even someone as laid back as Munch probably had the same issue - the media was as much the enemy as the bosses could be.

It was even more risky for someone like Craig. He was the new guy in the department, and it had taken him all this time to win even a modicum of trust with his fellow detectives. (Never mind that some of them would probably cut him off cold if they knew about his relationship with Gaffney.) If he were to even try to play the same kind of game, and get found out, he might get isolated, not just from Homicide, but maybe from the entire department. Considering how hard he had worked to get his detective shield, the idea of ending his career before it began was decidedly unappealing.

All of this ran against one hard fact: James Haybert had been murdered, and had been his friend. The fact that Haybert may have been no better than the junkies he had locked up did not change that fact. Pembleton wanted his death avenged. So did Worden. This was probably the cleanest way to get it.

"A witness came forward on the re-canvas," he told Wu. "We have a pretty good idea who did, and a warrant is about to be issued for his arrest. If this suspect is your source, the best chance he has of staying alive is turning himself in."

Wu considered this for a few moments. "And you can guarantee he'll stay alive?" she asked.

"Pembleton will. Like I said, he's a prick, but he will do everything in his considerable power to make sure your source gets due process." Now was not the time to mention the fact that for Frank, 'due process' would probably only mean until he managed to trick Nyerere into confessing. Besides, Elizabeth Wu clearly wasn't born yesterday. She had to expect that was coming.

Wu contemplated this for a few more moments. 'I'll tell him what you said," she finally told Craig. "And I'll do it quickly."

As he was walking away, she looked at him. "You're a lot easier to deal with, Detective Worden."

"Don't thank me yet," he said slowly.

The moment he walked back into the station, he found Deutsch and told him to get as many radio cars as he could find. Then he ran upstairs and found Howard.

"How well is our budget fixed for surveillance?" he asked.

The sergeant looked at him as if he'd gone a little crazy. "I figure we can afford maybe two or three cops and an unmarked car. "

"Get one to the Sun. Tell them to follow Elizabeth Wu," he said. "I have it on good authority that she's about to make contact with Matthew Nyerere."

"What kind of authority?"

" _Very_ reliable." Craig said. "You might also want to rouse Pembleton, and ask if he has any interest in making the collar."

Kay Howard graced him with a crooked smile that she gave only when a big case was about to go down. "Elizabeth Wu was in the squadroom half an hour ago. You wouldn't happen to have talked to her about this?"

Craig couldn't help but smile a little himself. "I can neither confirm nor deny that, Sergeant."

Within one hour of talking to Elizabeth Wu, Baltimore PD had Matthew Nyerere in custody. The fact that Wu had her meeting interrupted by what seemed to be every uniform in the Western District was something that probably would've overwhelmed a lesser reporter, but she had enough steel in her spine to only appear mildly shocked.

Two hours after that, Nyerere had confessed to James Haybert's shooting. It had taken a little less of an effort than Worden had anticipated, but considering that there was a pretty good chance even without his confession that he'd end up with a needle in his arm, Nyerere clearly considered that this was his best option. Frank looked a little disappointed. Or maybe he'd spent all his energy gloating at Wu when he'd made the arrest.

The squad had gone to the Waterfront to celebrate the end of the red ball, and Craig had been more than willing to go and drink a little, but after two rounds, the general dismay he had with the entire situation began to simmer. He excused himself, and started walking.

About five minutes later, whether by happenstance or just some kind of memory, he ended up at Alphonse's, a slightly higher class establishment than the Waterfront, but generally avoided by the police because it was known as a bar where reporters gathered. He had a feeling who he was going to find, and he wasn't wrong. Elizabeth Wu was drowning her troubles in a Scotch and water.

Now that he'd found her, Craig had no idea what or even if he was going to say anything. But Wu's instincts apparently hadn't been dulled by her drinking. "If you've come to wallow in my disgrace, please don't."

"Actually, I came to apologize," he told her.

"Why? For doing what any real cop would've done in that situation?" Elizabeth said. "Honestly, I'd have been disappointed if you hadn't tried to use me."

Craig was a little stunned. "You're taking this a lot better than I thought."

"Maybe I'm wallowing a little myself," she told him. "I've only been a police reporter for a couple of months, but I sure as hell shit a brick here. My first major story, I write a puff piece about a good cop who turns out to be a drug addict. My second major story, I try to protect a witness who turns out to be the shooter. You'd think I couldn't track a bleeding elephant in the snow."

"How do you think I feel?" Worden replied. "I'm called in to investigate the murder of a cop who I always figured was a solid citizen, and it turns out he's an addict who got himself killed. Maybe my fellow detectives are right that I'm not ready for Homicide."

Wu actually looked at him with sympathy. "I wouldn't go that far. You managed to do a pretty good job of getting the bad guy, and protecting him from being killed while surrendering. That's pretty solid policework in my book." She turned back to her drink. "For what it's worth from me."

"How badly did your editor hose you?" Worden asked.

"Honestly, I think he was more pissed that I didn't wrestle Nyerere down, and bring back to the copy desk to tell his story than the fact that a cop killer was arrested." Wu shook her head. "But I guess bosses are alike everywhere."

Indeed. In his statement to the media, Barnfather had pretty much refused to comment on any story about Haybert being an addict, but he hadn't gone out of his way to sing his praises either. Somehow, though, he doubted that Haybert would be getting full benefits when it came time to help his widow. Then again, maybe this was why Worden wasn't a political animal. Or was he?

"Has your editor decided to throw you to the wolves?" he asked.

"He made noises about sending me to Frederick to cover the traffic beat there." Wu shook her head. "But I'm guessing if I can find another decent story in the next week, he'll be all smiles again."

"That is the undisputable truth about Baltimore," Worden found himself saying. "There's always another dead body around the corner."

"I guess nothing ever changes in this city, and nothing ever will."

The idea that had been floating around his head for the last few days finally catalyzed. "What if they could?" he found himself saying.

Wu just looked at him.

"Oh, I know we can't stop junkies from killing other junkies, or the drug war, or even the bosses from being the bosses, but at the least, we can make life irritating for them."

"Are you drunk, Detective?'

"A little," Craig admitted. "But that doesn't change the fact that the bosses deserve to be made to feel as shitty as the rest of us. I got my position essentially because one of them wanted to make life shitty for the rest of the department. What goes around comes around."

Wu put her drink down. "Go on, Detective Worden."

"We're about to become friends, Elizabeth." Worden said. "I think now you can start calling me Craig."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

The next two months followed a deceptively normal routine, both for Craig and for the Homicide Unit at large. Oh sure, the dead bodies continued to fall, but there were no serial killers, and no other red balls.

Kellerman returned to the squad a couple of days after the Haybert murdered was cleared. There were rumors that he had to spend a night in jail because of some barroom brawl, but Meldrick assured him it was nonsense. Lewis went on vacation for a week, and Kellerman partnered with Bayliss on a series of bombings, then once with Munch, on a case that was very personal for him. Apparently the victim, Helen Rosenthal, had been a childhood friend of John's, and it had shaken the sarcastic detective more than usual. Craig knew better than to press Munch on it, within the next couple of days they were back working murders again.

Something had shifted in Bayliss' and Pembleton's relationship as well. Frank remained as intensely private as ever, but something was shaking the man. Eventually, he learned through secondhand gossip that he and Mary, who had married for ten years, had taken their infant daughter, and moved out. This shook Craig. Frank had been the only detective in this entire squadroom who had a stable, loving family. If Mary had been willing to stick with him through the stroke and his long recovery, only to leave him now - it was very unsettling. He was pretty sure that was the reason Bayliss had started working with him again, though there was still something very shaky about their new partnership.

But domestic squabbles aside, the squad was moving back to business at a fairly regular clip. So when things were about to change radically, not just for Craig, but for everybody in the Homicide Unit, he was almost completely unprepared. Admittedly, so was everybody else, and it would only become clearer who much things were disrupted in retrospect.

It started, indirectly, when he and Munch went out to a motel to investigate the death of a Nigerian national in a beatup motel. It seemed like a nothing death - the man clearly caught the man by surprise, but it wasn't clearly a homicide. Indeed, a couple of hours, Cox told them the fact had died from a massive drug overdose - just not the typical one. He had been carrying sixty-eight ounces of heroine in his belly, and the condom had burst, causing him to die. What made this of interest to the FBI, Narcotics, and critically, Lewis and Kellerman, was that this shipment had been destined for Luther Mahoney.

Considering the number of bodies that had been dropped by Luther over the past year - their shift alone was carrying nine open cases - it was small wonder that Giardello had demanded that he and the squad be called in on the task for. Craig and Munch had caught three of them over the past six months, and Worden would've been delighted to be included, but someone had to do the paperwork for the other murders.

Then Munch had gotten a call from an old case of Stan Bolander, a man named Punchy DeLeon, who said that he was willing to hand John closed murder. Munch, who had asked Craig to handle the paperwork for the autopsy, one what he thought would be a losing proposition, left him behind.

Then things started to get complicated. Apparently, the victim had been buried in the parking lot at Pimloco, Section C. Munch then had to persuade Howard and Gee to dig up the parking lot. One problem, there was no dead body. Munch then tried to find out about the victim, Jimmy 'The Shirt' Pugliese, who apparently had disappeared ten years ago. Then Munch managed to track down Pugliese's girlfriend, and found a very alive Pugliese. It was the kind of thing that only seemed to happen to Munch.

While this was going on, the taskforce had decided to replace the dope shipment with baking soda, and see if they could shake Mahoney's tree. They did. Badly. Of course, that now met that there were a lot of angry dealers and dope fiends on the streets of Baltimore tonight. Frankly, Craig was amazed they didn't have a shitload of angry murders that day.

Munch was then ranted about the last twenty-four hours - understandably so. Howard had just told him to let the crime go, when Pugliese's girlfriend turned up and told Munch that a man had come with a gun and kidnapped Pugliese. Munch and Howard had rushed out to Pimloco, where Craig had a pretty good idea what they would find in the newly repaved parking lot.

So the squadroom was pretty much empty two hours later. Pembleton had taken a call on another murder, and when he had asked where Bayliss was, he was nowhere to be found. Howard and Munch were digging up the parking lot, and Worden was practically the only one to man the phones.

Then Gee walked into the squadroom. He looked worried. "Worden!" he barked. "I need you to go out Wycliffe Apartments."

"What's up, Lieutenant?" Worden asked.

"Luther Mahoney is dead."

Craig did his best to keep his face neutral, but he could feel the color drain out of it. "What happened?"

"Looks like an officer involved shooting." Giardello looked around. "Is everybody else on call?"

Bayliss was not his responsibility. "Yes, sir." No other way to broach the question. "Who did it?"

"That's why I'm sending you." Giardello must have sensed the worry. "Mahoney was a big fish in the community, even if he was a drug kingpin. I need this to be airtight. Be thorough."

This was the first case he was going to be working alone. And talk about a hell of a way to cut your teeth - he was dealing with the biggest drug kingpin in Baltimore.

He looked at Giardello for a moment, then walked out of the squadroom.

There were at least a dozen other uniform vehicles there by the time he got to Wycliffe. It made a certain amount of sense - considering the magnitude of the murder and who the victim was, there were probably at least half a dozen people from narcotics, trying to figure out how to dissect and hopefully dismantle the Mahoney empire.

However, his detective instincts were already honed that something was amiss by the time he got inside. Stivers, Lewis and Kellerman were all there, and suddenly he got a very sinking feeling in his stomach. Kellerman was smoking a cigarette, even though he'd supposedly quit the habit six months earlier. Lewis seemed remarkably calm. Stivers, on the other hand, looked horribly shaken - even more so than a detective who had seen her quarry get killed.

Cox was standing over the body, and she seemed to be looking a little more perplexed than usual. Not for the first time, Craig found himself wondering about the rumor that she and Kellerman were sleeping together.

He walked over to the three detectives. "So, you're the one who drew the short straw." Kellerman sounded a lot colder than the detective Craig had shared a squad with for more than six months.

"It's an officer involved shooting, Mike," Worden said slowly. "You know the drill."

"Of course I do. I called it in." He looked around. "Just you?"

"Just me." Craig looked around. "Alright, let's get this over with what exactly happened."

"Mahoney drew a gun on my partner, so I lit him up. Simple as that."

Under other circumstances, Worden might have been willing to let it go. He'd seen similar things happen at QRT, and hell, he'd investigated a couple of police involved shootings since he'd come to Homicide. He had no reason to doubt Mike's word. But it was the utter detachment in Kellerman's voice that truly bothered him. It was the same tone that he'd heard in the voices of quite a few stone killers. To hear it coming from Mike, shook him deeply.

"Mike, can I have your weapon, please?" he said slowly.

Kellerman nodded, pulled his gun from his holster, and handed it to him, butt first.

Craig decided to deal with the question that was prominent on his mind. "What the fuck happened, guys? Last I heard the three of you were out at Druitt Hill Park, about to grab up Mahoney and his crew. How the fuck does that go in just three hours to Luther Mahoney ending up dead?"

For the first time, Kellerman's cold expression faltered a bit. Lewis and Stivers looked at the floor. "Antonio Brookdale set up a meeting with Mahoney and his suppliers at three o'clock," Stivers told him. "We couldn't maintain line of sight, so we held back from a nearby building. We were maintaining surveillance, and than Luther just - went nuts."

"Nuts? He killed Brookdale and accidentally killed some poor woman who picked the wrong day to take her son to the park," Meldrick sounded angrier than he'd ever heard him. "We chased Mahoney back to his apartment to grab him up before he went on the run."

Meldrick looked him dead in the eye. Stivers gaze went back to the floor. There was more to this than they were letting on. The question was, how much did Craig care?

 _Be thorough._ Now he was hearing Gee's voice in his head. Better his than Gaffney's, though. "I bet the three of you are tired of hanging around here," he said slowly.

"It stinks of Luther's cologne," Kellerman said. Again that coldness. Craig reminded himself that while everybody in the squadroom hated Luther Mahoney, Mike in particular had cause to loathe him.

"Why don't you guys drive back to the squadroom? Let me finish walking through the crime scene and everything else. Soon as I'm done, I'll get back to the three of you." Worden told them.

"All things considered, I'd rather get this handled now," Meldrick told him.

"I think I saw Dawn Daniels out there. You guys are going to have IID up your asses soon enough; you really want to spend the next hour dodging the press as well?" Craig told him. "Besides, it'll give you a chance to finish up the paperwork on the Brookdale murder."

"Sure thing," Meldrick told him. As the three of them walked out of the apartment, Worden couldn't help but notice that Mike and Meldrick, two of the most laidback detectives he'd known, were now having a hard time looking each other in the eye.

He walked over to Cox. "I'm not expected you to uncover anything wild in the autopsy," he told her. "Nevertheless, I'd be grateful if you could be as thorough as possible."

"Sure thing, Worden." The perplexed look on Juliana's face was gone; she was all business now.

He looked for a familiar face, and found Officer Deutsch. He told him to rush Kellerman's weapon to ballistics.

"What would Frank Pembleton do?" he whispered to himself. He looked around the apartment. There was a wall safe hanging open, and a bag full of cash nearby. He was guessing that Luther had been planning to get out of the country the minute the meeting with Brookdale had gone south. He walked over to it.

He then turned to the other officers who had been dismantling the apartment. "There anything in this apartment that can link Mahoney to his cartel?" he asked.

"We're still going through it, but there doesn't seem to be much here," one of the patrolmen told him. "We've got a team sweeping the youth center, but we don't think he was stupid enough to hide it there."

"What about electronics?" Worden asked. "Computers, cell phones..." he trailed off. "Security cameras."

Luther Mahoney was a brilliant man. There was no way he wouldn't have some kind of electronic surveillance in his apartment. "Where the fuck is Brodie?" he demanded.

"He was showing the footage from Druitt Hill to the FBI."

 _Great. The one time he might actually be useful, and he's helping the Feds._ "Start looking for cameras." he told the patrolmen. "Anything that looks like some kind of camera or VCR, I want you bring it down to Homicide. Under no circumstances is anybody but the people in this room to know about it."

"Not even Homicide?"

"No." Craig told them. "Not yet."

The next six hours were emotionally and physically exhausting for Worden.

The ballistics report told the obvious; Kellerman's gun had fired the bullet that Cox pulled out of Mahoney. Cox also verified the obvious that Mahoney had died from a gunshot wound to the chest. What was also clear was that prior to being shot, Mahoney had taken a hell of a beating. There were bruises on his chest, arms and legs. It was reminiscent of the kind of beatdown suspects had gotten in the bad old days before they had been arrested.

Considering all the dead bodies that Mahoney had sent the unit in the course of running his operation combined with all the headaches they had gone to try him to all of them, Craig wasn't weeping any tears about that. What made less sense was, according to Kellerman's story, how the hell Luther had managed to get a hold of Meldrick's gun, thus causing Kellerman to shoot him in defense of others. It just didn't add up.

He'd been staring at some of the medical reports for the last five minutes, when Pembleton walked in the room. "How's the Raines case going?" he asked.

"It's a stone-cold whodunit. No witnesses, no suspects, no leads." Pembleton said as he sat down. "If you want to talk about something else, you should p-probably choose a better lead in."

Craig sighed. "We found one of those nanny-cams in the main room of Mahoney's apartment," he told Pembleton.

"Anything you can use?"

Craig shook his head. "It's 21st century technology. There's some kind of encryption involved. Brodie says the Colts have a better chance of moving to back to Baltimore than us getting anything usable off it."

"So there's nothing but the physical evidence and the witnesses. What do Lewis and Kellerman have to say about it?"

"I haven't talked to them yet." Before Pembleton could fix him with an icy stare, he said: "IID's already been grilling them the last two hours. I figured I'd give them a little while before putting them through the grinder again."

"Very patient of you." There was the Pembleton disapproval again.

"You like working alone?"

Frank was used to abrupt changes in subject. "I-I've come to find that a partner slows me down."

"You always were a loner. Meldrick, Munch, Howard, they've had to work alone because of other factors, and they always bitched about it. I can sure see what they mean." He picked up the case file. "First case I work alone at Homicide, and its this. Now, I have to interview detectives that I've shared a squad with for six months, and ask them about the death of a man, who, let's be honest, deserved to catch a bullet, and was probably destined to at some point." He sighed and put the case file down. "I am one lucky son of a bitch."

"A murder's a murder like any other. Doesn't matter who the victim is. What matters is whether it was clean or not."

Craig realized that Pembleton was the wrong guy to be talking to about this. Around the time he had joined the force, there had been a police involved shooting of a local bad boy named C.C. Cox. An officer named Hellregel had claimed that he had been chasing Cox, that he had slipped, accidentally discharged his weapon, and that the bullet had killed Cox. It had become clear very quickly that Hellreigel hadn't killed him, and Pembleton, who had been the primary, had ordered an investigation of more than a dozen plainclothes officer, trying to break the alibi, over the strong objections of Lt. Giardello. Eventually, he had arrested Lt. Tyron of the Eastern District, and even though he had been cleared of all charges, it had been a major reason why Pembleton was never going rise very high beyond Detective. Which was probably how Frank liked it.

Craig took a deep breath. "Well, I've dicked around long enough. Time to get started." He got up. "Do me a favor, Frank. Keep this conversation to yourself."

He decided to start with Meldrick. He knew that by now the three of them had had more then enough time to get their stories straight. Nevertheless, he tried to go with a soft Q & A, make them think that everything was a routine. Which meant that under no circumstances was he going near the box.

So he went to the break room. Lewis seemed nervous, but then Meldrick could easily get jumpy, and given the situation, an innocent man would be uneasy.

"How'd the vultures treat you?" Craig began.

"IID? They could prove the sun was cold if they thought it would put another cop in a jackpot situation," Meldrick told him. "God knows they've caused enough headaches for me in the past."

"Any officer involved shooting, they act like their balls are bigger then yours." Craig sat down on the other side of the table. "And considering who the victim is this time, you can hardly blame them for being more assholic than usual."

Meldrick chuckled a little.

"How many murders did you and Kellerman catch that were tied to Luther over the past year?"

"Counting the last two he took with him, twelve."

Craig whistled. "I haven't even investigated that many as primary."

"Well, you're young yet."

"Bad enough all those bodies dropping. But you couldn't tie one of those killings to him. He slipped out of your grasp three times since I joined the unit." Craig told him.

"He was one arrogant son of a bitch."

"I'll say. After you couldn't tie him to Reggie Copeland's murder, he actually had the titanium testicles to go to the Waterfront and buy you a drink." Craig shook his head. "All those cops, he was lucky to get out alive."

"It took all my self-respect just to show him the door."

"Is that why you beat him down?" Craig's tone of voice didn't change a bit.

Neither did Meldrick's expression, but he could definitely see that he was about to go into deep waters. "What are you talking about?"

"I have the autopsy report right here. There were all kinds of bruises and cuts all over Mahoney's body before he got killed." Craig knew he had to proceed carefully. "I know that the age of beating down a suspect went out of Baltimore with the age of billy clubs and jackboots, but I also know that in certain cases, exceptions should be made. And considering all the poison that Luther dealt and all the bodies he dropped, he had one coming." Craig smiled grimly. "Personally, I'd have been disappointed if he hadn't gotten one before he got booked."

Meldrick looked him dead in the eye. "It was the dumbest thing I've ever done. We had the bastard. He'd shot Antonio Brookdale in cold blood, and we had four witnesses who'd be willing to testify to it. All I had to do was being him in. But the slippery bastard had come in three times for questioning and gotten away. I couldn't just let it go this time."

"So you tuned him up. Big deal." Worden told him. "That much at least he had coming. But you get the suspect get a hold of your gun. One who had personally killed two people less than an hour earlier. What the fuck, Meldrick?"

Lewis shook his head for a few moments. "I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have. It's all on me."

He was on the verge of the truth. One more push, and Meldrick would give it up. It wouldn't even have to be that hard. And then, Worden made a mistake. He thought about the bodies and the wreckage that Luther Mahoney had left in his wake over the past three years. And he lay that against all the good Detective Meldrick Lewis had done as a murder police for the last five years. There was no moral equivalence here. A mistake that Meldrick had made for an instant shouldn't cancel out all the good that he had done in the past and could do in the future.

So he stopped sounding friendly, and acted professionally. "Would you like to amend your statement?"

Meldrick stiffened. And the moment had passed. "I let Luther get my gun. Kellerman and Stivers came in. Luther raised the gun to my head. Mikey did what he had to do. And that's all I have to say in the matter."

It didn't matter. Worden had what he had needed. And he knew exactly where he had to go to get the truth.

He went to Narcotics, where he figured Stivers would've gone, ostensibly to help start the dismantling of Mahoney's empire, but more likely to get as much physical and emotional distance from the investigation.

Worden may have been new to Homicide, but he could tell that Terri looked even worse than she had at the crime scene. On site, he had made the judgment that Stivers was going to be the weak link. He didn't know what Lewis or Kellerman had said to her in the last twenty-four hours, but he was willing be it hadn't done anything to make her feel any better.

"Hey, Terri." Craig said as casually as he could manage. "I'm a little surprised to see you here."

"Daniels told me to go back to stay at my desk until this was handled, so that's where I am." Stivers' affect was flat, but she sounded even more worn down than before.

"You want to take a walk with me?"

"Do I have a choice?"

This was unsettling. He'd expected at least some give with her, but she sounded like she was ready to roll over without much pushing. "This isn't a big deal yet, Terri. If it was, you'd have come to our house, not me to you. Anyway, given all the shit that's gone down the last couple of days, I figured you could use a break."

Stivers' didn't argue, or maybe she just wasn't capable of arguing. "Where do you want to go?"

"How bout to Jimmy's? I could go for some scrapple right about now."

"I'm not really hungry."

She wasn't going to need that much of a push. But he'd better be more careful than he had been with Meldrick. "Let's just get out of the squadroom. Away from the prying eyes."

"So, Daniels must be thrilled."

"Oh sure. Three bodies cooling at the morgue, half the city's dope fiends at each others throats, yeah they're really thrilled with me."

Craig was beginning to sound a little baffled. "You just took down the biggest kingpin in East Baltimore. I figure that's going to be good for at least a citation."

"Why? For having a man half of East Baltimore thought was a saint end up in a body bag?"

"The other half knew that he was a drug dealer. This is the kind of thing that the bosses love to celebrate. A victory in the war on drugs."

"Victory?" Terri gave a cynical laugh that Craig would have expected more from Munch than anyone else. "Sure. They'll be dope on the table. We'll be able to pick a couple of suppliers, maybe a couple of the lower level dealers. Then there will be a lot more shooting and deaths, as someone new, better supplied, with more tact ends up filling the void left by the late, lamented Luther. Just you wait. By June, at the latest, this shit'll start all over again. SSDD."

"And I thought the folks at Homicide were pessimistic." Craig couldn't help but say.

"When I got into Narcotics four years ago, I honestly I was going to make a difference. Stop the OD's, stop the killings. You know, there was a Detective Silva, the year I started working. Said that within three months, I'd either burn out or be as cynical as he was. He told me that this wasn't a war, it was a pea shoot. And that the other side had claimed victory decades ago, we just didn't want to acknowledge it."

"Then why are you still here?" Craig asked. "You could've transferred out instead of getting Mahoney's pager number."

Stivers shook her head. "I don't know. Shit, maybe I will switch departments. Hell, working sex crimes is looking good to be right now. I am just so goddamn tired of running up the down escalator."

All of this sounded valid. Craig had known more than a few detective who'd gotten tired of the whole push-and-pull of the drug war that was drowning Baltimore. He just didn't figure it would come this soon after what should have been, by anybody's standards a major victory. She'd been positively ebullient when she, Lewis and Kellerman had headed for the stakeout in Druitt Hill Park yesterday morning. Right now, she sounded like she was one step away from eating her gun.

"You know, I'm beginning to think this can wait. Why don't you go home, catch a few hours sleep, and we'll pick this up tomorrow?"

Terri shook her head. "Daniels sent me home last night. I tossed and turned for four hours. I didn't sleep a wink." She looked around. "Honestly, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to sleep again."

His instincts had been right. Stivers was this close to breaking like an egg. Craig knew that if he pushed her, he could probably get the truth out of her right now. "You know, I am still a rookie detective. But I have learned a few things. And Terri, you're one step away from Lady Macbeth right now."

Terri raised an eyebrow. "I guess I have been hanging around Munch a little too long. The point is, I'm betting if you just told the truth about what happened in Luther's apartment, you'd be able to sleep just fine."

Stivers considered this for a minute. "Maybe. Course, when I wake up tomorrow morning, I might be facing more considerable problems. Like whether or not I still have a job. Or if I'm facing some kind of charges myself."

"For what? It's only been a day since Kellerman shot Luther. My guess is half the paperwork hasn't even been filed." Worden shook his head. "Hell, even those pencil pushers at IID are still probably figuring out what they want to leave out to make you look bad."

"They probably wouldn't have to try that hard."

"Kellerman killed Luther Mahoney. Not you. Not Lewis. And hell, maybe it is a clean shooting, like everybody says. But the only way we're going to work this out is if I get a straight answer to what happened. Just tell me."

Stivers was definitely a lot rawer than Meldrick had been. "How do I know you'll do the right thing?" she asked.

"Can't be any worse than where you are right now."

Stivers didn't need that long to tell Craig what had really gone down in Luther's apartment. And suddenly, he was very glad that he was working alone. He knew that if Pembleton had even a wisp of what had happened, the cuffs would be going around Kellerman's wrists even as he spoke.

Worden, however, wasn't nearly so sure. He was pretty sure that had he been in a similar situation, he wouldn't have put a bullet in Luther's chest. But everybody in the Baltimore PD had a good reason to loathe Luther Mahoney, and he couldn't say that he wouldn't have at least considered it. That someone who hadn't been put through more shit than this than Kellerman or Lewis, he didn't blame him.

Now, the question was, what the fuck was he going to do about it?

So he decided to do what he had been avoiding, and have a conversation with Kellerman.

"Hey Mike," Craig said, going by Kellerman's desk, "I'm ready to talk to you."

Kellerman didn't seem any more interested than he had been in the past twenty-four hours ago. "Fine, let's talk."

Craig looked around. "let's go somewhere private."

"The Waterfront?" Was he serious?

"How bout the roof?"

"I thought you quit smoking," Craig said, as soon as he had made certain the two of them were alone up there.

Kellerman actually looked a little sheepish for the first time in a bit. "I just couldn't take the tension any more. You're not going to lecture me, are you?"

"Actually, I was going to ask if I could bum one. This seems to be a pretty good time to resume old habits." Worden told him.

Kellerman didn't object, and even gave him a light. "I didn't know you smoked either."

"I quit when I joined Homicide." Craig admitted. "But I often find they're useful getting through unpleasant conversations. And I've got a pretty good feeling this one is going to suck."

Kellerman didn't run or ask for his PBA lawyer. Craig decided to take this for a good sign.

"You know, I don't ever got around to telling you what a shitty deals you got from the Feds." Craig said as he took a drag.

"Yeah, I know."

"I'm serious, Mike. They call you a dirty cop, drag your name through the muck for four months, then let you go without so much as an apology." Craig shook his head. "There's no nice way to say it, you got fucked by the system."

Kellerman actually looked remorseful for the first time all day. "I finally started to work my way through it, but it wasn't a lot of fun. Besides, its not like you had any reason to know better."

"How long had it been since you got no-billed?" Craig asked.

"Three months, six days." Mike told him.

"So I can understand why you wouldn't exactly be eager to go through this kind of shit again." Craig said casually. "Especially for a shitstain like Luther Mahoney."

"He was the scum of the earth," Kellerman was back to being ice cold again.

"He was. No question. And I'm not exactly going to throw myself on his coffin when he gets buried." Craig told them. "But I can't exactly just go through the motions like this is any other murder."

"I guess you've talked to Meldrick and Stivers." Kellerman took out a cigarette of his own.

"I have," Worden said, just as noncommittally. "And I think I know as well as you do what they had to say."

"Which was?"

"Something that passes muster in a police report. Neither of them gave you up, but they left out just enough, so that someone with really prowess, could nail your ass to the wall."

Kellerman still seemed remarkably calm, considering his future was hanging before his eyes. "You didn't answer my question."

"You are so lucky Pembleton or Bayliss isn't investigating this case. As much as they respect you, they'd have you in the box by now, recommending you call your PBA lawyer." Worden shook his head. "Me, I see things differently."

"And how do you see it?"

"There is no way in hell Danvers or anybody in the DA's office would want to put this case before a grand jury." Craig admitted. "Considering who Luther Mahoney was, I can't see any of them wanting to try and stick a charge on you for this. It would just put up a level of ugliness that this department and this city does not need. Nine times out of ten, fuck, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, there's no way they'd indict. And on the off-chance that it did, I can't see a single jury in the world voting to convict. But given all the shit you've already been through the past year, I could understand why you might not want to put faith in the system."

Kellerman considered this for a very long time. "Just what are you trying to say?"

"Strictly between you and me, and I will deny it if ever pressed by anybody else, I understand why you did what you did." Worden told him. "The question is, are you willing to stand by it?"

Kellerman looked carefully around. "What about Stivers? And Terri? If I face charges, they might end up as much as jackpot as me. I'm willing to put my ass on the line. Are you willing to put theirs?"

Craig had been thinking about trying to use his chits with Gaffney to try and make sure Lewis and Stivers came out the other side. Then he figured that the Captain would have no problem sacrificing them or Kellerman to make sure the department looked good. This was the dirt that Gaffney had probably sent him to Homicide to dig up. And now, it was up to him to decide what to do with the shovel.

'I see your point," he told him. "Here's mine. I think you're a good cop who keeps getting dealt a shit hand. Which probably means you've been having a lot of trouble trusting people. I want you to trust me, Mike. Trust me that I'm going to do the right thing."

Kellerman gave a bitter smile. "That is kind of why we're here."

Three hours later, Worden knocked on Gee's door. "I've completed my investigation into Mahoney's shooting."

"And what is your conclusion?" Gee asked neutrally.

"In trying to arrest Luther Mahoney, Lewis got carried away, and used excessive force while trying to apprehend him. While do so, Mahoney got a hold of Lewis's gun, when Kellerman and Stivers arrived on the scene. Luther pointed his gun as Lewis, and Mike shot him." Worden took a deep breath. "It is my belief that Kellerman acted in defense of others. It is my recommendation that no charges be filed against Detective Kellerman."

The Lieutenant considered this for a few moments. "You'd be willing to testify to this before an internal board if it was necessary?"

'If I had to. But given what Kellerman has already been through with the Feds and Internal, I'd be grateful if there was anything you could do to preclude this." Worden told him. "I realize that Lewis overreacted when he encountered Mahoney, but considering his record at Homicide, I'd be willing to go before the disciplinary board about this." He shrugged. "It might not be the worst idea for all of them to undergo some psychological counseling. I know from my time at QRT that this can really shake a person up."

He handed him the file. "I'll do what I can." Giardello told him.

"If that's all, I'd like to get back in the rotation." Craig prepared to leave the office.

"Detective Worden." Giardello said. "I wanted to thank you for being so thorough in your investigation. I know that police-involved shootings are probably the worst part of the job for almost every detective here. You handled it very well." He stepped out from behind his desk. "I realize I may not have been the most friendly person to you, but you've more than proven yourself these past months, and I'm glad you're part of my unit."

For once Craig took in Giardello's praise without a corresponding amount of guilt. He thought it came from doing the right thing for once.

He didn't realize he had put himself in more than one person's bombsight by this decision, and by the time he did, he admitted that he couldn't have proceeded any other way.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Craig had expected that there would be more thunderbolts headed his way after he finished writing up the Mahoney shooting as clean, if not from Gaffney, then certainly from IID. But there was no real fallout from it, at least not right away.

Mike and Meldrick seemed to get through the next few days relatively calmly. The coldness that had been in Mike's affect dissipated, and he was a lot friendlier to Craig then he'd been since joining the unit. He had gone to see Stivers a couple of times in the next few days to make sure she was going to come out all right. She admitted to him that she'd been feeling a little shaky physically, but was starting to feel a bit better.

Worden had actually begun to think that he might have gone through the most difficult case that he'd have to deal with when he joined Homicide. By this point, however, he should've known that far worse things were about to approach.

It certainly started innocuously enough, though. They were on the late shift, and Pembleton, of all people had just finished regaling the unit with a story of people in Kentucky falling prey to death by a machine that made cole slaw.

"Since when did you start doing Munch's job?" he found himself asking.

John didn't seem to mind, and in fact complimented Frank on his delivery.

"Well, if that's the case, John, what are we going to need you for?" Howard piped up.

"Police work."

Gee just happened to be walking through the squad. "Police work?"

"So, there's a bit of red under my name. Things will clear up eventually."

At that moment, the phone rang. Frank picked it up, even though he had just caught and closed a murder less than twelve hours ago. He looked around. "Where's Bayliss?"

It was a valid question. Apparently Bayliss' disappearance the day Mahoney had been shot had not been an anomaly. It seemed that half the time Bayliss was out of the squad, and when he returned, he would offered half-assed excuses and always seem a little distracted.

"What is it. Frank?" Giardello asked.

"There's a dead body in Hampton," Frank told them. "Apparently, uniforms have the suspect pinned down."

"A dunker? Give it to Detective Munch," John said.

"Why should I hand you a closed case?" Frank asked.

"Consider it your good deed for 1997." Craig told him. "You hand him an easy case, I won't have to hear him bitch about his clearance rate for the next two weeks."

Pembleton seemed to be considering this for a few moments. "All right," he said. "But you've got to lend me your partner."

This clearly came as a shock to everybody in the squad, not the least of whom was Craig himself. "May I be so bold as to ask why?" Munch replied.

"Suspect was last seen heading towards the main building of the African Revival Movement." Pembleton was already walking to the closest to get his coat and fedora. "There's a decent possibility we're going to need to do a fairly thorough search in order to bring him out. We're going to need manpower."

"Just try not to dent him, Frank. I'm still got to need him to help me with the Jimenez case when this is done." Munch said. "I take it I'm handling the dead body."

"You always get the easy stuff. You get spend time with Dr. Cox, I have to deal with house to house searches."

"How much do you know about the ARM?" Pembleton asked as they were driving to their headquarters.

"Only what I hear on the morning talk shows," Worden admitted. "Their founder, Burundi Robinson, has been building an organization to try and help the unfortunate in Baltimore the last few years. He runs a soup kitchen, a drug rehab center, and a couple of major day care centers."

"Seems to be the model of a community leader." Frank said, thinking to himself. "So why would a murderer run into his building?'

"First of all, until we actually have him in custody, and he's confessed, we can't even really call him a suspect." Craig reminded him. "Second of all, you're from New York. You hear about this kind of thing all time. Suspect doesn't think he'll get a fair shake from the establishment, he runs into his church. Robinson's no deacon, but his whole organization does sound like the kind of place a man might run."

"I'm hoping its as simple as that," Pembleton told him. "Gee was not happy when I told him about this."

They pulled up to the area around the main building. There were murals and signs everywhere, but for all that, it was a pretty intimidating looking building at three in the morning.

The uniforms were around the building, but as far as Worden could tell, no one had gone in. "What's everybody standing around here for?" Pembleton demanded.

"They said they wouldn't let us in without a warrant." Deutsch told them.

"You don't need a warrant. You were in pursuit of a suspect on foot. That is the definition of exigent circumstances." Pembleton turned to him. "Take the door."

"Hold on, sergeant." Worden blinked a couple of times. Even after he heard the voice, he wasn't sure whether the lateness of the hour wasn't making him see things. Colonel Barnfather was at a crime scene. "The African Revival Movement has a lot of sway in this city. I believe proper procedure should be followed, which includes getting a search warrant."

This was borderline ridiculous, even for the bosses. Nevertheless, Craig had just been about to follow orders, when Frank called him off.

"I'm ranking officer," Barnfather said slowly.

"And I'm the primary. This is an extension of the crime scene, which makes me de facto commander, according to Section 6-4 of the Baltimore Criminal Justice Code. I'm therefore using my authority and I say we take the door."

Any other cop, Craig would have thought that he was pulling this out of his ass. But Frank Pembleton had always had a reputation for having the Code of Police Procedure memorized. Even given all that, he still expected Barnfather to pull rank, or at least call Giardello. He did neither, and the officers walked to the door.

Pembleton walked up to the Colonel. "What brings you out to an ordinary crime scene at three in the morning?"

Worden blinked again. He'd been wondering the exact same thing, but he wouldn't have had the balls to ask the question. Now that he'd had a moment to think about it, the Colonel hadn't exactly sounded happy when he'd given the order in the first place. Something was clearly going on, and while most of the higher-ups activities were above Craig's paygrade, he didn't think this was business as usual.

For the next three hours, Craig was too busy to give the strangeness much thought. He was too busy focusing on the business at hand.

The deceased name was Kenya Merchant. Munch had actually found a witness at the scene, and even odder than that, this witness said he knew who had killed Kenya and who had told him to do it.

Deutsch had identified the man who had run into the building. That had been, if anything, even more awkward than the problems with Barnfather. Craig was used to seeing dozen of black faces staring down on him at a crime scene, but this seemed... different. More personal, somehow. Even in a crowd, most of the witness just seemed indifferent. The Movement was angry. Was it because Merchant had been one of their own?

The suspect was one Benin Crown. A thorough search of the house had revealed only one gun, a .45, which according to Munch, matched the bullets that were found in the crime scene. Crown's prints were on the weapon, which made this case seem like a slam dunk.

Worden figured that Munch and Pembleton had this handled. He was about to go home, and try and hit the sack for a few hours, and leave them to do the paperwork.

Then he got a call. From Captain Gaffney, who he hadn't talked to since the Mahoney shooting.

"I need you to do me a favor," The Captain wasn't even bothering with protocols. "The suspect in the Merchant shooting. I need you to have a conversation with him."

Now Craig was starting to get really worried. "That's Munch's case. And Pembleton's the secondary. There's no way he's going to let me go anywhere near the box."

"You're a creative guy, Detective Worden. Find a way to get them away from the interrogation room for five minutes. Then I need you to go in, and tell Benin Crown to invoke his right to council."

Craig was now really pissed. Gaffney hadn't exactly been a great rabbi to him, but what he was asking him to do was actively interfere in a murder investigation. This was the kind of thing that could get you thrown off the force, and the Captain was basically ordering him to do it with no moral dilemmas. But then, Gaffney had never seemed like the kind of person who suffered from morals.

"You know, when the Colonel tried to piss on our crime scene, at least he had the dignity to come down and do his own dirty work." This was open insubordination, but considering what Gaffney asking of him, that was the least of his worries right now. "Which does beg the question, whose dirty work are you doing?"

There was a long pause on the end. "There are consequences to not respecting the chain of command, _Detective."_ Gaffney sneered.

"At least my conscience will be clean." There was more Craig wanted to say to the Captain, but he terminated the call first. Probably just as well. Gaffney might have put him back on street patrol before the night was on if he'd kept talking.

Reluctantly, Craig found himself walking over to Gee's office. The Lieutenant looked troubled himself. "Gee, can we have a talk?" he asked slowly.

"What's this about?"

"Does the African Revival Movement have any pull in the department?" It was a fair question.

"The man in charge, Burundi Robinson, he used to be a cop. "

"Did you know him?"

"He left the department in 'seventy-two, about the time I joined."

"So there's no way he could have any pull with the bosses?"

Giardello appeared pensive. "I just had an interesting conversation with Barnfather. He more or less told me that he came down to the crime scene in order to pull you and Pembleton off it."

Craig was momentarily struck dumb. He wasn't sure what he found more astonishing: that Barnfather had been acting under the tool of the bosses, or that he actually had some moral compass. "Why did he let Frank win that argument?"

"I've been sitting here for the last five minutes, wondering that myself."

"Where's Benin Crown?

Everybody recognized that voice. Giardello and Worden came out of the office to see that Captain Gaffney was in the department

Worden watched the conversation that followed in a kind of detached fashion. Gaffney had apparently decided that if you wanted to do toady for someone, you had to do it yourself. Then he did what not even the Colonel had had the balls to do. He pulled rank on Giardello, and ordered him to let Gaffney speak to Crown.

By now, Pembleton and Munch were clearly as puzzled by what was going on as Craig was. Why were the bosses so determined to interfere in this what looked like a simple murder?

Gaffney came out of the room in less than two minutes. "You know, I think we need to have a conversation about your style of leadership, Lieutenant," he practically sneered. "Apparently, anybody who works for you starts to feel that they don't owe a damn thing to the chain of command."

That was an arrow aimed right at Craig, and he had no doubt that Frank or Gee would pick up on it later. Right now, however, there were far more pressing things to consider.

Like the fact that their suspect in the shooting of Kenya Merchant had just invoked his right to counsel.

Giardello told Craig about an hour later that he wanted Worden to work this case a little longer. Worden hoped that it was because they considered him a decent detective, but he had a sinking feeling it was because Gee was looking for the rat.

The witness in the Merchant shooting was another member of the African Revival Movement named Malawi Joseph. Worden watched through the interrogation room window as Joseph was more than willing to tell them why Kenya had been murdered. It had been as a direct order from Burundi Robinson. Merchant had found out that Robinson had been whoring out some of the women in the movement, and that some of the kids that were seen running through the building were his. When Kenya had found out about it, he had threatened to go public. Which probably wouldn't have helped Robinson's reputation with all the morning shows that he'd been doing recently.

Pembleton had told Craig to administer a polygraph to Joseph about this story. Worden was a little uncomfortable doing so to a man who was a cooperating witness in this investigation, but considering that Joseph offered not only to do so, but to bring further evidence against Robinson in order to bring him down, he managed to stow his objection. He was beginning to understand why Munch had wondered if there were any more like Malawi at home.

Giardello was more angry about the idea about what they were suggesting than the fact that Robinson might have ordered a killing. He likened it to J. Edgar Hoover wiretapping the civil rights movement supposedly out of national security, when the man was nothing more than a common blackmailer.

Danvers clearly saw the potential dangers here, and said that they had enough to charge Crown, and they could leave Robinson out of it.

"Maybe we should," Worden told them. "Look, Gaffney and Barnfather have been all over our asses about digging in too deep. Now, I'm not wild about giving in to the bosses, but you know what they say about discretion."

Everybody, including Gee, found themselves looking at Pembleton. There was no reason they should be; he wasn't even the primary on this case, but he was the moral center of the unit. "However this shakes out, its still a murder."

This seemed to resonate with the Lieutenant, who reluctantly agreed to go along with it, under the condition that Joseph's name stay off the files.

The next eight hours they wired Joseph up, and sent him back into the ARM. Joseph managed to win back Robinson's confidence, but the leader of the movement clearly remembered a few rules from being a cop. He spoke in the tones of someone who didn't want to be entrapped. The closest that he came to saying anything about Kenya Merchant's murder was vague terms about the 'need for a sacrifice'. That sure as hell wouldn't stand up in court.

"We need to send him back end, get him talking directly about Merchant's murder." Danvers told him.

"You think he'll be willing to stick his head in the lion's mouth again?" Craig asked.

"He knows how dangerous this is," Munch told them. "He wants justice for Merchant more than we do."

At that moment, almost as if he'd been on cue, there was a knock at the office door. Gaffney had resurfaced, and if he had been unpleasant before, he was positively loathsome now. He asked what was on the tape recorder.

"My legal notes," Danvers was apparent by now, even more suspicious of Gaffney than Craig had ever seen him.

"Interesting listening?"

"They're property of the State's Attorneys office."

Gaffney shrugged, as if he hadn't just bullied one of their closest allies. Then he turned to Giardello, and told him that he had been going over the Merchant file, and that the name of the witness had been left out. "I need the name," the captain said casually.

"When you look at yourself in the mirror, Roger, what do you see?" Gee demanded.

"I see someone who follows the chain of command.. Now, will you give me the name of the witness, Lieutenant?" Gaffney demanded.

"This is the second time you've pulled rank on me. There won't be a third."

This was the moment where Craig casual dislike of Gaffney became out and out hatred. It took all of his restraint to not snarl at him as he took Malawi Joseph's name from him.

Craig could see what was going to happen over the next eight hours before it actually happened. They wired Malawi Joseph back up, and sent him back into Robinson's inner circle. When Malawi asked whether the sacrifice of Kenya had been necessary, Robinson laughed in his face, and said that the idea was utterly ridiculous.

Listening to the recording, Pembleton had no choice but to conclude that they had been compromised in this investigation from the very beginning. For whatever reason, Gaffney - or whoever above him was pulling his strings - had decided that Robinson and the ARM were not to be touched by this investigation.

Danvers was no less infuriated by this as well, but by now had reached the conclusion that there was nothing that they could do. "We'll charge Crown with first-degree murder, and see if a couple of months down the road, he'll be willing to take a lesser charge in order to testify against Robinson."

Pembleton and Munch clearly didn't like this idea - Crown hadn't said so much as a word since being charged yesterday - but it was clear that they weren't getting much in the way of options when it came to getting somebody to talk.

Then Gee, who had been silent through all this, began smiling. "We're not going to talk to Benin Crown. We're going to talk to each other."

Even having been in the unit for more than six months, Craig was more than a little surprised about what happened next. They brought Benin Crown to the box. Pembleton, Munch and Giardello sat there for five minutes, and said absolutely nothing. By the end of that time, Crown, who wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, was beginning to wonder what the hell was going on.

Frank then began talking to Munch about the Merchant murder. John told Frank that he had a murder weapon, a witness and a suspect who was giving no extenuating circumstance for why he had committed the crime, and he was content.

Gee then began talking about Crown's history, that he was a good kid, that he had a real family, and that for him to just throw his life away seemed ridiculous. Then they started talking about how Robinson was whoring out women, including Benin's sister.

This understandably got Benin's attention, but Frank and the others continued to speak as if he wasn't in the room. Benin continued to get more and more irate when Danvers 'happened' to show up, to discuss the sentence that Benin might receive. Which was looking, even under the most optimistic of judges, as 20 to life. More discussion of Benin's complete and utter foolishness in being loyal to a man who was, in every sense of the word, screwing him over. Crown eventually got more and more belligerent, and then Frank told him that his best move would be to fire Robinson's attorney, get one who had Benin's own interest, and get a good deal for himself the next minute he was in lockup.

The three of them then left the room, and Crown left the building about five minutes later.

"I have to say that was beautiful," Craig told them.

"Did you hear something?" Frank asked.

"Nope. Not a goddamned thing." Munch said cheerfully.

"All right. I get it." Craig admitted.

"It's going to take a few hours for things to unfold," Giardello told them. "But considering how genuinely messed up the situation is, I give Crown five minutes after getting back to lockup before he fires his lawyer, another thirty before a public defender arrives, and another hour after that before he and Danvers can knock out a deal involving testimony against Burundi Robinson."

"I'm sorry we have to do this, Gee," Pembleton told them. "I know you had respect for the man and what he was doing."

Gee looked a little more pensive. "There's some piece of this we're still not seeing," he said slowly. 'Who's giving him his information?"

This was something that Craig had been avoiding thinking about for the last few hours. Gaffney had demonstrated more thoroughly than ever that he was a stooge. But even he wouldn't do something this deliberate unless he was listening to someone much higher up the food chain. It clearly wasn't Barnfather, and Gaffney would never have taken orders from Robinson directly. So who the fuck was making everybody dance?

This was the kind of thinking that was way above his paygrade, and he had a feeling that if he and the rest of the unit stepped any further out of line, they could all end up being fired.

He didn't realize just how horrible the situation could be yet.

The next twelve hours would be among the most harrowing that Worden would ever go through while working for the Baltimore PD, and that was even before the full measure of the consequences would fall on everybody.

The first part had gone more or less exactly how Giardello had predicted it. They had the warrant to arrest Robinson within the next two hours. Considering the mess that was likely to follow, Gee had called for the entire unit to come in case things started to go south. And things went FUBAR very quickly.

Mere moments after Pembleton served the warrant to Robinson, he slammed the door shut, and three members of the ARM came out, looking very unhappy. Pembleton had a clearer idea of what was going to go wrong before anybody else, and ordered every unit to fall back. Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly quick enough, and there was a member on the ground within five minutes. The ARM members started throwing bottles on the cops, and it was beginning to look like a riot was on the verge of breaking out.

The tension was already starting to get thick, and then it came from another altogether different source. Because Bayliss, who had been AWOL ever since the original call, was there.

Frank was not happy to see him now, and he got even more pissed off when Tim was very vague about where he had been the last day and a half. Pembleton had a great ability to put personal issues aside in favor of a red ball, which this was rapidly becoming.

In less than an hour, QRT, Barnfather, and Gaffney were all on the scene, even though no one had asked for their support. He could understand why QRT was there, but Craig figured this situation was one errant bullet away from erupting into a wave of violence.

Craig walked up to Jaspers, who, as almost always was the case in the middle of these situation, was a perfect mixture of calm and irritation. "Detective, I don't have time to get into a pissing contest right now. I have my orders."

"I realize that," Craig said calmly. "But unless things have changed since I was on the squad, you need to get a call from a superior officer in order to form a cordon. And since I know for sure that Gee didn't call you, I'd like to know which of the brass gave you the order."

The look of frustration that Jaspers perennially seemed to have on his face disappeared. In its place was a look of conflict that the lieutenant never tried to show to his men, or anybody else. "I know that the rest of the department thinks were just here to clean up the messes that other people make. But we have to do this for a reason. I didn't take this job to become an assassin."

Suddenly Craig went cold. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"We have orders. If the situation comes up, QRT is to take Burundi Robinson out. Negotiations are to be considered secondary." Jaspers momentarily seemed to pale. "Any other lives lost are to be considered acceptable collateral damage."

This was appalling. Something like this could damage the already shaky reputation the Baltimore PD had with the rest of the community for decades. And even Barnfather had to realize this. Only someone way up the food chain could give this kind of order. "Who's pulling the strings, Jaspers?"

"I think you know."

"If there's to be any chance of getting out this without bloodshed, we need to be thoroughly briefed." Craig looked at his former superior. "I need to hear you say it."

For a very long moment, he thought he'd pushed him too far. Then the head of QRT turned to him, and whispered in his ear. "Deputy Commissioner Harris."

Craig had expected to hear this name, but there was one thing about thinking and knowing it. The head of the Baltimore Police Department, a thirty-five year veteran of the PD, had been manipulating and trying to circumvent the investigation into a homicide. He couldn't think of a single reason why he'd be willing to flush his career down the sewer in the name of Burundi Robinson, but he'd just received confirmation of that fact. Gee had to know.

He ran over to one of the black-and-white's where a grim-faced Barnfather was looking at Giardello.

"The orders are that Robinson is to be taken out," Worden told Gee.

"He's out of his mind." Worden would have done a double take. The Colonel had just said that.

"No, he knows exactly what he's doing." Giardello told him. "And there's no way that I'm letting him get away with it."

And then the Lieutenant did either the most courageous thing he'd ever seen, or the dumbest. He walked right up to the door of the ARM, and hammered on it. Five seconds later it opened, and Gee just walked right in.

"What the hell is he doing?' Pembleton asked.

"Trying to save lives. I think." Worden was still reeling from everything he'd heard.

"How? We're an ass-hair from the gunfight at the OK Corral," Munch was clearly as frustrated as everybody else, but right now, Worden had other concerns than that.

"Has the press gotten here yet?" he asked.

"No, but given how fucked up the situation is, I figure the whole Baltimore media will be here in a matter of minutes." Munch told him.

A dangerous idea was forming in Craig's head. One that he was pretty sure could getting him kicked out of the entire department in a matter of days. He didn't want to go through with it, so he really hoped that Giardello could somehow come outside with Burundi Robinson willing to surrender. But he had long since lost his sunny disposition.

About an hour later, Giardello emerged. He held the door open, ordering all tactical units to stand down. Women and children began running outside as fast as they could, and Craig, the rest of the detectives and uniforms began getting them to safety.

For the briefest of moments, Worden had this fantasy that maybe, things were going to turn out okay after all. But the second the last woman ran out the door, Robinson slammed it shut in Giardello, and the rest of the police's faces.

By now, Gaffney was on scene, ordering a visibly tense Jaspers that the orders were that Burundi Robinson was to be taken out. If he'd been a prick in front of the squad and Danvers, he was downright preening now. He basically told Colonel Barnfather that if he didn't know what the orders were, he wasn't going to be holding his position very long.

Suddenly, Giardello pulled Gaffney aside. He told the Captain that Deputy Commissioner Harris had given up the witness that they had used in the Merchant case, that Harris was corrupt and a liar, and that he intended to have a full report on the Mayor's desk the next morning.

Gaffney just snubbed him, saying that these were unfounded allegation, and that he should think twice before smearing a man's career.

"Whose career would that be?" Worden found himself saying. "The Deputy Commissioner's or yours?"

"I'd really worry about the level of insubordination in your unit," Gaffney said slowly. "Chain of command. You've got to follow it, or you're not long for the job." He walked over to Jaspers. "If the opportunity comes, take Robinson out."

Jaspers looked even unhappier than Barnfather, but reluctantly began ordering his men into position.

The next five hours were long even for a cop who'd been used to spending hours holding position or on stakeout. The house went quiet. Gee ordered half the squad to go home, saying that it could be a long time before this was resolved, and someone needed to stay behind when Baltimore citizens started killing each other again.

Munch, Pembleton and Craig stayed behind, just waiting, mostly silent. Gaffney ended up leaving, too, which was a relief for Craig. He didn't know how much longer he could be around the man without punching him in the face.

By midnight, Craig couldn't take the tension any longer, and walked over to one of his friends from QRT to ask him what the fuck was going on.

"We don't know," he admitted. "Last hour, there hasn't been a sound or movement out of the entire place."

Munch heard this. "That's impossible. There's sixteen men down there. How can they not be making a sound?"

"They can't." A look of horror was on Gee's face. He gave the order to Jaspers to take the building.

Even then, Worden wasn't sure what the hell was going on. He knew it had to be something horrible, but even wasn't willing to consider what it might be.

QRT smashed the door open, and came crashing in through what appeared to be every window in the building. Not a single gunshot rang out. The ARM had been ready for blood when Gee had gone in, but not they let it be taken without a single shot being fired. And even after all of this happened, Craig wasn't prepared when the through the building floor by floor, and found all the lights out, and not a single member to be found.

They went to the basement. And there was Robinson and the fifteen other members. All of them were holding glasses and there was a large chemical jar. It wasn't clear what was in it, but the end result was obvious. What had started out as a movement designed to help the downtrodden forgotten of Baltimore had gone the way of a cult thinking the endtimes had come. And for the ARM, it had.

No one on the squad said anything, even as the ME's started carrying the bodies out to the morgue. The press descended on Giardello, and the other detectives. Gee looked even more depressed than usual when Dawn Daniels approached him.

"What happened here, Lieutenant?" Daniels asked.

"I won't say." Giardello paused. "But I can tell you this much. There'll be hell to pay."

Craig agreed with his lieutenant one hundred percent. He looked around, and sure enough, Elizabeth was there. Her normal stoic reporters look was gone, and she looked as sickened as Craig felt.

He took out his pad, wrote down a few words, then pushed himself past the media, looking harassed, only half as an act, and bumped into Elizabeth.

Wu looked into her hand a couple of seconds later very discreetly. Craig's message didn't leave much room for doubt.

 _DEEP BACKGROUND. COVERUP. RG._


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Craig knew that the second he'd passed that communication to Elizabeth that he was going to be sitting on a powder keg. He hoped that what was going to happen would just bring down Gaffney, but he wasn't naive. Theoretically, the whole department could come crashing down.

For two days, there was quiet. Eventually, Craig knew that it was the calm before the storm. Because three days after the mass suicide, Gaffney came storming down to find him in the halls of the department.

"Are you the one who did it?" the Captain demanded.

He was going to play dumb as long as he could. Given Gaffney natural lack of detective instincts, that might be long enough. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't fucking play games with me. Some bitch from the _Sun_ has been calling me for the last day, asking me about whether I was responsible for giving up a witness in the Merchant investigation."

Craig's immediate reaction - to say _Well, you did -_ took a lot of energy to clamp down on. "Well, Captain, considering what a balls-up that entire investigation turned out to be, I could see that a lot of people might want to throw you to wolves," he said slowly.

"What are you talking about? You knew."

"Really? Because I'm pretty sure that someone is going to hold the Commissioner's nuts to the fire. And considering that he basically created you, he might well feel that making you the department scapegoat could solve all his problems."

Gaffney hesitated for the first time, as if this genuinely had not occurred to him.

"And why do you think I'd give you up? You got me transferred to Homicide in the first place. I was barely involved in the investigation. Munch and Pembleton, they were the main investigators. Surely they have more reasons to hate your guts than I do." Craig paused. "Now that I think about, didn't you nearly get in a fist fight with Frank three years ago? Or did I hear that wrong?"

The Captain clearly was starting to reel a bit. It was typical of Gaffney. When he got an idea in his head, he would traditionally twist his version of it to fit the facts. Another reason why he'd barely lasted a year in Homicide.

"And I'm pretty sure Danvers was in the room for part of this. And you know the States Attorney's office doesn't like haven't its independence threatened either. Bottom line, Captain. You've managed to piss off a lot of people. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, that's kind of part of _being_ an effective leader. But I'd go looking in that direction before you go snapping at your friends."

Gaffney was clearly stymied. He really seemed like he had been misdirected. And he wasn't sure he believed it either. Finally, he looked at Craig. "Anyone from the press calls about any investigation going on, tell them 'no comment.' Understand? "

Considering that Worden had heard through one of the secretaries that Giardello had followed through an written a report about Harris' role in the investigation into Burundi Robinson, and that there was a very good chance that Harris was going to be retiring soon, he had a feeling that nobody was going to be giving the media the time of the day for the next few weeks.

"You can count on me, Roger." Craig said carefully. As the Captain walks away, Craig hid his face, and moved as quickly as he could. Apparently, Elizabeth was a better reporter than the entire investigation into James Haybert's murder had prove. And if she had figured out the role Roger Gaffney had played, even by implication, there was a very good chance that Gaffney wasn't going to be in the department much longer. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

So as Craig walked into Homicide, he actually had the nerve to think that, for the first time in awhile, things were going to be looking up for the unit.

That feeling lasted until Pembleton walked in about half an hour later, looking physically gutted.

"I thought it was a straight up suicide," Munch asked him.

"It was a suicide. It just wasn't straight up." Frank took a deep breath. "Beau Felton blew his head off."

All of the oxygen went out of the room. With the exception of Kellerman, everybody in the room looked like they'd all just been gut-shot. And for a brief moment, Worden felt the same way.

He hadn't known Felton personally - given the fact that he'd been a patrolman in the wrong part of Baltimore, he'd never run across him at a murder scene - but he'd heard about him. He was the only detective in all of Homicide Roger Gaffney hadn't considered an asshole. This didn't necessarily mean that Felton had been a good detective. In fact, when he'd been coming up on QRT, Jaspers had told him that Beau Felton should be a cautionary tale for anyone wanting to make a career as a murder police.

Even when he had been at his best, Felton had never been much of a police officer. He was a piss-poor investigator, he was sloppy with procedure, and he had a reputation for being, if not a racist, definitely a redneck. And that was before his marriage had started to fall apart, he'd developed a serious drinking problem, and gotten shot making an arrest. Just secondhand, it hadn't seemed like anybody had particularly missed Felton. But based on what Munch had told him, it had been odd that Beau had just vanished off the face of the earth.

Pembleton and Howard went into Giardello's office. Considering who Felton had been to her, Craig wasn't surprised. Once again, he had enough presence of mind to notice that Bayliss was missing from the squad again. For the first time since Tim had started to go on walkabout, Craig was beginning to get really pissed.

As for the rest of them, Meldrick in particular looked like he was getting agitated. Craig knew enough gossip as to why - Steve Crosetti's suicide was a stigma over the entire department - but Meldrick didn't look reflective or upset. He looked pissed.

"If anyone else is planning on checking out, could we have some advanced notification?" There was a tone in Lewis' voice that Worden didn't like. "How we are going do it? There's the Crosetti long walk off a short pier method. There's the all-popular slitting your wrists over a bathtub drain, hell, maybe we should all just get together, mix some drain cleaner with the morning coffee, same way your man Burundi Robinson left this world?" There was something bordering on hysteria in his voice now. "I just want to know so I can get my dress blues ready? Show of hands please?"

By now, Giardello and Pembleton were out of his office. Kellerman had walked up to Meldrick, and muttered something about getting him a cup of coffee. Lewis shrugged him off, and stormed out of the unit.

Craig hoped he wasn't going to tie one on at the Waterfront, but he had a nasty suspicion that business at the bar was going to increase dramatically among his fellow brothers in blue over the next couple of days.

"It may not be him," Howard told them. She didn't sound much better than Meldrick. And considering that Beau Felton had pretty much been her only partner since she had been in Homicide, Craig could hardly blame her. However, the fact that Kay was this ragged was, if anything, even more alarming that Meldrick being hysterical.

Kay was Homicide's Rock of Gibraltar, the one certainty in an ocean of chaos. This had something to do with her hundred percent clearance rate, but also that she never seemed to be disturbed by the mess that had infiltrated the unit in the several months he'd been here. That Kay seemed to be in the middle of a state of denial - Pembleton was carrying Felton's badge - was even more troubling than Meldrick's hysteria.

Kellerman looked pretty shaken as well - more likely he was concerned about the well being of his partner. But he didn't rush after Meldrick, either - maybe just for the fact that he had never even met Beau Felton, and wouldn't be able to come up with the right words. For that matter, Craig didn't think he could, either.

Feeling even more impotent than he did after any stone cold whodunit, he just went back to his desk. Hoping that the phone would warble and send him back on the street. But the gods, as was the traditional case in Baltimore, were not with them. The phone didn't ring for the rest of the shift.

With nowhere else to go, Worden found himself at the Waterfront that night. The news hadn't gotten much better. The autopsy had confirmed that the corpse had Felton's prints. Howard had gone back to her desk after learning this, and had basically sat in silence. Pembleton, who from what little stationhouse gossip he had heard, had never much cared for Beau, was even more quiet than usual. He had gotten royally pissed off when Bayliss had popped up a few hours later, again with no explanation as to where he'd been. Giardello had not emerged from his office, no doubt thinking of that for the second time in three years, another of his detectives had taken his life without any hint or foreknowledge. To say the mood was bleak in the squad was an understatement.

Munch was behind the bar. Lewis was at the pool table trying to clear it. Craig ordered a double bourbon - for him, a heavy drink. "I guess this is our wake." he said.

"You really haven't been here long enough." Munch said slowly. "First comes then the funeral, then the department burial -"

"Not like they'll give a dress parade for Beau." Meldrick said as he sank the seven.

"Then again, considering who the honoree is, my guess is Beau would be grateful for three days of binging," Munch pointed out.

"That's not funny."

"Was he really that much of a drinker?" Worden asked.

"The last six months he was at Homicide, half the time he'd show up hung over." Munch told him. "Granted, most of that time he spent chasing down his wife, so that excuses part of it."

"I never understood why he wanted to stay married so bad," Lewis told him. "Now I kinda get it. But what the hell was he thinking? Man had three kids. Much as Beth put him through hell, he would've walked through fire for his children. And he's just willing to leave them fatherless?"

"I will say, those kids now have zero chance of growing up normal," Munch admitted. "Whole reason that I never got around to having children in the first place."

Lewis gave up his futile effort to sink the eight ball, and walked over to the bar. Meldrick was an even lighter drinker than Craig, so it was somewhat disturbing to see him weaving a bit. "Crosetti had a daughter. Loved her more than life. And it didn't seem to bother him that he left her without a father. One thing about the whole mess that I still just can't forgive him for."

"Guys, this is nobody's fault. Last I heard, Felton resigned from the department a year ago, and made absolutely no effort to keep in touch with anybody." Worden didn't know why he was defending the man, seeing as he had never known him, but he felt _somebody_ had to. "Howard said he completely fell off the map, and she was his partner for four years. There's only so much any of us can do."

"Yeah, well, if Mikey or Frank or Kay fell off the radar, we'd at least make an effort." Meldrick told him slowly. "We liked them. Truth of the matter is, nobody really gave a damn about Beau Felton."

Then Meldrick's eyes looked off into a corner. He was clearly thinking of something painful, but Worden didn't have the balls to ask him what. It probably had something to do with Crosetti.

"You don't mean that," he said.

"He has a point. I called Stan twenty times after he was suspended, even though he never called me back. I never called Felton once. I figured Kay was doing it." There was actually a look of something close to guilt on his partner's face. "You think anyone's called Russert yet?"

"My guess is Gee's going to handle that." Meldrick went behind the bar, and poured himself a shot.

Once again, Craig was at a loss. Megan Russert had been in Paris for the last year, supposedly pregnant with some diplomat's baby. She couldn't have known Beau that well - she'd been first shift commander, then captain, in the year their careers intersected. As far as he knew, Russert didn't know Felton any better than she would have known him.

"Well, considering there probably won't be much of a departmental funeral," Lewis said, "we might as well start giving Felton the sendoff right now." He lifted his shotglass to the ceiling. "To Beau Felton. Husband, father, detective. Not exactly a standout at any of them, but still one of our own."

Munch fixed him with a dark glance. "What? It's not like he's gonna get much better of a eulogy from the bosses."

Meldrick couldn't have been more wrong.

The next day was full of revelations. First, everybody learned how Beau had been spending the last few months. It was even less distinguished than any of them had thought. He had been in a business with a chop shop owner from Pigtown named Frank Cantwell. Or at least, so said a rugged detective from the auto squad named Paul Falsone. He believed Felton had been using his connection to get work to Cantwell about keeping his department one step away from the police.

Kay didn't want to believe this. Gee didn't either, but he had to admit that was as good a reason as any for Beau to have taken his own life.

Except a few hours later, Dr. Cox made another one of her appearances in the squadroom to tell them that Felton had been murdered. After nearly a day and a half of stapling Beau's skull back together, she had determined that Felton had been shot behind the ear, and than had his entire face blown off with a shotgun, staged to look like a suicide. Beau's name went up on the board under Pembleton, who for some reason wasn't in the squad when Cox gave the notes of the autopsy.

Howard asked Craig to come back to Felton's apartment, where Frank had found the body not twenty-four hours earlier. When Craig had pointed out that he had no connection to the case, Howard said she was the superior officer, and that they needed to get fresh eyes on a murder scene that was now at least one day cold.

"All due respect, Sergeant, you're more than capable of figuring out a murder by yourself." he pointed out.

"All due respect, I didn't even consider the possibility that Beau killed himself when the call came in." Kay told him. "I need fresh eyes to see if they can find something until Pembleton gets on the scene."

So they went to the apartment, which was pretty close to skid row in what wasn't the junkie section of town.

As they looked over the apartment, Craig decided to ask the question that nobody else was willing to. "You really think Felton could have been dirty?" he asked in as gingerly a tone as he could.

He half expected Howard to bite his head off. Instead, she was very quiet for a long few moments. "Honestly, I don't know." she admitted. "Beau was my partner and he was my friend, but I hadn't seen him in nearly a year, and I hadn't talked to him in even longer. You think you know a person, but unless you sit across from them every day it turns out, you might not know them at all." She sighed. "It looks like I'm probably going to find out."

They spent the next half-hour, searching the apartment. Pembleton joined them afterwards, not giving an explanation as to where he'd been. After a full hour, Frank was willing to consider the possibility that Felton hadn't been killed here.

"I don't think so." Howard said, looking grim. "Take a look in the bathroom."

They went it. Worden was puzzled. He'd already checked it and found it clean.

"That's it. It's pristine. How many men living alone manage to keep a clean bathroom?"

She then noted a small chip in one of the tiles in the shower. "Could that have come from a bullet?" she asked.

Frank and Craig concurred, and Craig left to call the crime scene people. Before he could leave, he saw Kat come as close to crying as he'd ever seen her in the time he'd known her. "The bastards killed him in his own bathroom," she muttered to herself.

As Craig figured, the minute the crime scene people showed up, Howard politely ordered him back to the squadroom, and told him that she and Pembleton would be handling the investigation from here. Worden didn't take offense. He knew that, technically, he could have said that he could have pointed out that the Sergeant had no business being near this investigation, but he figured that Kay was more entitled to find out what had happened to Felton than anybody else in the squadroom.

Falsone had been called back to the squad with one of his informants for Cantwell's squad, but a few minutes after that, Giardello left the office, looking even more pissed than usual.

And then, a woman in her late thirties with dark-red hair appeared in the squadroom. She was wearing a Chanel suit, and a scarf and a hat. She simultaneously looked lost, and utterly sure of her surroundings.

"Excuse me, can I help you?" Worden asked.

The woman looked at him a little oddly. "I should hope so. You're sitting at my desk."

It took Worden a few moments to make the connection. "So you're Megan Russert. Craig Worden." He shook her hand awkwardly.

"So I guess the bosses really can get a detective when the need comes."

Now was not the time to bring up Gaffney. "The squad had been operating a detective short for three years. Maybe if you've been gone another year, they'd have finally come up with another one."

Russert had a rueful smile on her lips. "I know what it's like to have to fight the bosses at every turn. Maybe that's I didn't miss the job that much."

Craig finally put two and two together. "You're back because of what happened to Felton."

A genuine look of pain crossed her eyes. "Gee called me two days ago. I figured I could mourn just as easily here as I could in Paris. Besides, maybe I can help."

Now Craig truly did feel awkward. "Well, Pembleton is the primary, and we're going through some background of what Felton might have doing since he resigned." He took a deep breath. "You hadn't had any occasion to speak with him after he resigned from the department?"

"Honestly, I hadn't talked with Beau since after his initial suspension." Russert looked nearly as mournful as Howard had earlier. "Things had always been awkward between us for the past few years, but he didn't make any effort to reach out in the past year."

"I'm sorry. From what I understand, Felton worked on the other shift when you were made Lieutenant. Why would you have more than a professional relationship with him at all?"

Russert now smiled painfully. "You really are the new guy. I'm guessing no one bothered to fill you in on the office gossip." She looked him dead in the face. "Beau and I had an affair just after I became Lieutenant."

For the first time ever since he'd joined Homicide, he desperately wanted to shrink small enough so that he could sink into his own desk drawer. This was what happened when you worked in a completely different district - he'd heard gossip that Russert might have gotten knocked up by a French diplomat, but he'd ignored that, and hadn't even cared who the last woman who had had his desk might be sleeping with.

He was grateful that Howard and Munch chose that moment to show up, and recognize their former detective. As they indulged in small talk, Craig decided to slink away.

He didn't get far before he ran into the Lieutenant, who didn't look much happier than he had before he want upstairs to talk with Barnfather. Craig took this mean they were still off the investigation into Felton's murder.

Giardello basically ignored his questions, and went looking for Pembleton, who apparently had gone back to the roof to talk with Bayliss.

And then, just to make the day complete, Falsone came down from the interrogation room, demanding to know what the hell was going on with the investigation.

"I don't know," Worden finally threw up his hands. "Nobody in this unit tells me jack shit. Felton commits suicide, no, he was murdered. The investigation is closed, its open again. And right now, the detective whose desk I currently sit at, just flew across the Atlantic to find out who murdered a man she used to sleep with. I thought this unit had problems before."

"Who?" Falsone was clearly having trouble following this.

"Right now, I'm getting myself back into the rotation. A stone cold whodunit would be preferable to the soap opera that this unit is rapidly becoming." He looked at Falsone. "I know you may not like the idea, but I suggest you go back to Auto and wait for someone to call you. Failing that, you might want to start trying to pull in Cantwell's crew on your own. Cause I'm telling you right now. You're not going to get much help from Homicide."

Once again, it became very clear just how out of the loop he was. Because less than ten minutes later, Giardello came back in, telling everybody Homicide was now back on the investigation.

Things, however, didn't get any simpler. First, another stranger entered the unit - a plainclothes cop in his late forties, pudgy with graying hair. He was introduced as Stu Gharty, and Gee told everybody he worked with IID.

The temperature in the squad dropped ten degrees. Things had been messy for Craig when people had just _thought_ he was with Internal. To have someone who was actually part of the rat squad among them, made everybody's spine stiffen.

Then the other shoe dropped. At the time of his death, Felton apparently working for IID, undercover to find out whatever the leak in the department that was helping Frank Cantwell pull up shop. He'd apparently done excellent work, until he'd gotten shot.

This didn't make anybody more inclined to like him. In fact, Russert and Howard seemed to bare a very specific grudge towards him, which Worden just couldn't read.

Then they came out into the squadroom, and things got worse. Bayliss started working with Falsone. Russert started calling the auto squad. Howard started giving orders to Munch and Craig. Pembleton then reminded Howard that he was the primary. Kay then did something that she had never done all year. She pulled rank on a fellow detective. Then she erased Felton's name from Pembleton's side of the board and put in under her own. He had a feeling the squad was this close to a genuine fissure.

Then Gee's baritone called Howard and Russert into his office, in the tone that always brooked no argument. He made it clear that Pembleton was the primary on this case, and that was how it was going to work. Frankly, Worden was a little astonished this case hadn't been classified as a red ball, rather than just have Homicide and IID working together. Reluctantly, he decided that this was no longer any of his business, and went back to his desk.

A few minutes after that, both Howard and Russert left the office. A little after that, Gharty, Bayliss, Falsone and Pembleton all left as well. Munch came back a couple of minutes later. "Are we humble peons going to be let in on the details of this investigation, or should we just go back to looking into the deaths of junkies?" Craig asked his partner.

Lewis looked across as him. "'Humble peons?' Dang, Worden. You have been hanging around Munchkin too long."

"You make that sound like a bad thing." Munch looked at Craig. "They've got four detectives handling the back work of this investigation. You know what they say about too many cooks."

"What they say or what Pembleton says? Cause I'm pretty damn sure his is the only opinion that matters right now."

Munch actually looked a little sheepish at this. "I honestly think it might have helped to have Kay and Russert on this decision. Maybe Gee is worried about how this might end up playing out if and when the case ever goes to trial."

That didn't sound like the Al Giardello that Worden had come to know over the past year, but he decided to let that go for now. "And the rest of us are supposed to just go on investigated normal murders?"

"Now that you mention it, Frank did give me an assignment. He asked me to go down to talk to Dr. Cox, see if there was anything else on the autopsy." Munch hesitated. "Basically, he wanted to know if Beau picked up a drug habit while he was working undercover."

Considering that from what he had learned, Felton had basically been a barely functioning alcoholic the last year he had been at Homicide, this didn't seem outside the realm of possibility. Nevertheless, it did seem to be kicking a cop when he was down. "You really think a drug dealers would have enough patience to stage his murder to look like a suicide, particularly one where he blew the man's head off?"

"Still a rookie, I see. There are more than a few dealers who are either just that stupid or just that lucky. In either case, I think it needs to be played out just to eliminate it." Munch pointed out.

"You know, there are times I truly and utterly hate this job." Craig sighed.

"Good." Munch said. "That means you still give a damn. I went numb to this kind of thing years ago."

Another back-handed compliment. Pretty much the only kind Munch gave. "When are you headed down there?"

"Right now, before Frank calls me and lights my ass on fire." Munch got up, and started putting his coat on.

It seemed wrong to be sitting around idle, while a dead cop lay in the morgue. Visions of James Haybert were flashing in his head, and how the entire department had turned out force to investigate, even when they had learn that Haybert was dirty. Was this really how things worked when a former Homicide detective died? It just seemed wrong.

Abruptly, he walked into Gee's office. "Where did you send the Sarge and Russert?" he asked his boss.

"I don't think that's any of your business." the lieutenant said calmly.

"Felton was murdered, and for whatever reason, you ordered the two detectives who might be able to have the most perspective on how he died off this case. Now, I didn't know Beau Felton, and I certainly am the last person to pull rank, but before I go back to drug murders, I think I should at least know why."

There was no reason Gee should have told him anything other than to get the hell out of his office. So it came as a considerable shock when his boss took his reading glasses off, and looked at him. "Felton's marriage was always a mess. So much so, that even after he died, his wife doesn't want anything to do with him. I need someone to make a funeral for him. Someone who gives a damn about him. I asked Kay and Megan to do it, because if they didn't, no one else would." He looked at Worden. "Do you have any more questions?"

Craig didn't say anything else. He just went back to his desk.

Lewis and Kellerman went out on a call about an hour later. Not that much after, the group of detectives came back looking even more morose than they had when they went out to investigate originally.

The re-canvas had come up with no additional information on the night Felton had died. Bayliss and Falsone had had a bit more luck. They had gone through the ludds on Felton's phone the week before he had died, and they had found out that there had been a series of calls to a fifteen digit number, which led back to a pager belong on to a Joseph Jones. Fake name, fake address. The last time that pager had been used had been the night of Felton's murder, and the last number that had been dialed after the pager had been Beau's number.

Munch had gotten the toxicology report on Felton, and he was clearly as shocked as any of them to learn that Beau had departed this world clean and sober. At least he had been taking that part of his job seriously near the end of his life.

All the searching that they had done seemed to have amounted to naught, and when Howard and Russert returned to the squad and learned that five detectives had gotten practically nothing two full days into the investigation, Kay was even more pissed than she had been when Giardello had pulled her off the case. Russert was quiet, but she seemed only marginally less angry. She went into the coffee room, Kay went back into Gee's office, no doubt to make another plea to take over the investigation.

Craig walked back into the office, feeling even more lost than he had the last few days. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked Bayliss.

"Yeah, it's time that we started pulling in Cantwell's crew," Bayliss told him.

"If we do this, Cantwell will know that we are on to the leak in our organization," Gharty said. "Felton will have died for nothing."

Pembleton heard this. "Look, we have pursued this investigation from every other possible angle. The only chance we have of solving Felton's murder is pulling in Cantwell's people, and see what we can shake loose."

Gharty clearly didn't like this, but he saw that there was no point in arguing. "Look, if we're going to do this, I need to pull in the guy who I used to get Felton in with Cantwell. Otherwise, we will definitely have another body on the street."

"Who is it?" Frank asked.

"Low level spotter named Eddie Dugan." Both Pembleton and Falsone looked up at this. "You know who he is?'

Of course they did. He had been Falsone's snitch. Not two days, they had pulled him in, and he had told them he had known nothing special about Felton's relationship to Cantwell.

Suddenly, indiscriminately, Craig was pissed. "You know, next time, you guys at IID wonder why everybody hates your guts?" he said, walking up to Gharty. "This is People's Exhibit A."

He stormed off, infuriated.

The next few hours things actually managed to unfold rather well. Falsone brought Dugan back in the squad to ask a few more questions. Craig and Bayliss watched the interrogation, as Pembleton, for reasons that boggled the mind, had disappeared.

The second that Gharty showed up in the box, Dugan was cooked. He was in a jackpot beyond a mere two-year stretch for car theft. He tried to deny it a little longer, but then Gharty dialed the pager number had unearthed. Dugan's pager, which he had claimed wasn't his, went off.

Looking at thirty years in prison for party to the shooting of a Baltimore police, Dugan folded, Frank Cantwell himself had been the man who pulled the trigger.

Of course, this being Baltimore, nothing went according to plan. When they went to make the arrest, Frank was gentlemanly enough to call Howard and Russert and tell them that they should serve the warrant. Craig wasn't a hundred percent sure that this was legal, or even allowable. But when they stormed Cantwell's headquarters, it turned out to be a moot point. Frank Cantwell was gone.

Russert looked at them. "Well, with Beau, nothing was ever easy."

Now that Felton had died in the line of duty, there was a level of dignity to it. There was a memorial at the Homicide unit. Barnfather was there, but Gaffney wasn't. Mayor Schmoke had shown up, and so had the governor, but the Deputy Commissioner was nowhere to be found. Neither was anybody in the Felton family.

The Commissioner asked Giardello to accept an award on Felton's behalf. There was a certain irony in this, considering that Gee had never gotten along particularly well with Beau, but he made a good speech. Then, however, he had to leave because Harris had asked to see him.

As they toasted Beau Felton, Bayliss asked Russert what her plans for the future were. "I don't know," she admitted. "Half my life's in Paris, half of its here."

"Well, if you decide to stay Megan, let me know." Munch spoke up. "This gadfly couldn't carry your holster."

"She'll have to find her own desk." Worden pointed out. "I'm not going anywhere."

And at that moment, Giardello showed up again, looking ashen. "I've just had a meeting with the Commissioner. Effective immediately, detectives will be put on rotation from every department every three months."

Everybody started looking at each other. "What does that mean?" Howard asked.

"It means that in three months, none of us may be here." Gee said flatly.

Immediately, this struck Worden as one final 'fuck-you' from Harris. If he had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, from the department, he was going to make sure the entire police department was rat-fucked before he left. This could only end in the entire department being flattened.

Craig walked over to the refreshments stand, and refilled his coffee. "I'd like to propose a toast," he said. "I know I've been in this unit for less than a year, so feel free to tell me I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. This is a good unit. The best of the best. If we can survive losing one of our own, we can survive the nightmares of the bureaucracy. We have before. We can again. We may not be perfect. But we work Homicide. No matter what."

He'd managed to do something nearly impossible, especially considering how worried he was about his own ass. He'd managed to lift everybody spirit, if only for the moment. Homicide would go on.

It always did.

 **THE END...FOR NOW**


End file.
